I would like to talk a little about vacations, if you’re free right now. I know it’s late.
When my brother and I were in the 9-13 age range, my grandparents flew us to Florida to visit them over spring break, at a condo they rented during the winters. We went three years in a row, I think. Something I’ve been wanting to do for awhile is go back to that same place. I still have the address, and could rent the exact place for a week. But…well, I added up the cost. The place itself. The airplane tickets. The rental car.
Here is the issue. I have LOTS of friends who go on vacations, even every year. They go on Disney cruises, or they go to Hawaii, or whatever. They’re not richer than us, I don’t think. (Though they do have fewer children.) I’m combining that norm with something I’ve encountered in myself, time and time again, which is that I can be overly surprised at what things cost, to the point of being squirrelly and crazy when THAT IS JUST WHAT THINGS COST, THAT IS JUST WHAT YOU HAVE TO HAND OVER IN EXCHANGE FOR THE THING. I freak out about insurance. Braces. Dental work. Tickets. House-painting. Tree-removal. Toilet replacement. Property tax. Take-out. It makes me wonder: am I being squirrelly and crazy about vacations? Because I’m starting to think YES.
I’d like to know your philosophy of vacations, I guess. All around me I hear things about paying for EXPERIENCES rather than THINGS, and I get that, I do, but also the experiences are still expensive, and I can’t help but weigh those against how many things that could buy. Or, for example, how much college education that could buy. Or how much retirement savings that could buy.
Actually, no. I said I wanted to hear philosophies of vacations, but I don’t. Periodically I read someone saying that they “work hard, and DESERVE it,” as if people who don’t earn enough for vacations don’t work hard and/or don’t deserve it, and that kind of thing makes me want to throw up and/or hit somebody really hard and/or sell everything I own and go live in a hut. And I feel similarly when people talk about NOT taking vacations in a way that seems as if they want to make people feel bad. “Maybe this is just us, but we don’t want to throw our money away on fleeting pleasures when we could be buying clean water for Africa”; “Must be nice to have this to think about—we can’t even afford groceries.”
So let’s not do that. Let’s not feel like we want to throw up / hit someone / live in a hut. Let’s instead see if I can figure out what I actually want to know, which is NOT “how I justified my vacation expenses to myself” OR “how I tried to make other people feel bad for taking vacations.”
So what IS it I want to know? Okay, I think it is this: what do you think is a reasonable price to pay for a vacation? I’m thinking of a one-week thing, and I’m including all the costs: the hotel, the rental car, the flights, the meals, the thingies, ALL of it. I don’t know if what’s useful here is dollars or percentage of annual income. Because, like, I can picture celebrities thinking it was well worth spending a mere $50,000 on a nice refreshing little break, while that’s the ANNUAL INCOME for the median U.S. family. And maybe I need to say “per person,” because there are so many persons in my family.
Or, really, it doesn’t have to be based on a week, or a per person sort of thing. Maybe you don’t go for a week, or maybe you haven’t really thought of it in per-person terms, so there you sit, thinking you can’t participate in this discussion. And it doesn’t have to be based on what you think is reasonable: maybe you think a cost is not reasonable, and yet you’re glad you spent it. Or maybe you think a cost is reasonable, but it’s a moot point because you don’t have that much extra to spend. I guess what I’m trying to find out is whether I’m being weird about money/vacations. And so any information/opinions you have on this topic would be useful. I’m finding it hard to work through it on my own. Possibly what I want you to do is justify my vacation expenses to myself. It’s hard to know. I think what I want to hear is your conflicted feelings.
the other day I saw/heard something about Disney tickets and almost fell off my chair. Whatever it was I figured it was like $1200 for 4 tickets for 5 days BEFORE YOU LITERALLY DO ANYTHING like have a place to sleep or eat nevermind souvenirs. Which is to say I get where you’re coming from. $1200 to stand in a line. Really.
That said, in the middle of snowpocalypse (I live in coastal MA) I was pricing out how to run away to Mardi Gras with my 2 children. It got all funny in there (we’d likely stay with friends, hello, friends, here’s my family of 4 and if it was just me and the children we were going for like 2 weeks but when I was looking for all 4 of us it was more like 4 days). Anyway, it all got us thinking of planning a trip for next Mardi Gras because the children would love it. Airfare (baby will fly free) $1000, rental car $600, everything else $1,000 (food for us and friends we’re staying with mostly. Mardi Gras is free). One of us may ride in a parade +$1,000. So, just to go for a week and not stay anywhere? $2,600 for 4 people. We’d air bnb if we don’t stay with friends, so that’s another $700, I’m assuming. $3,300. And then if we do the ride in the parade (dues + throws) $1,000. $4,300. (I think I’m over estimating on the food, etc portion but that just makes me feel better when we don’t spend it all. Far better to over budget methinks, than under.
Now I don’t know about this again. But, actually, we can afford it. It’s stupidly expensive. The damn mouse wouldn’t be cheaper though – airfare would be about the same, $300pp, $900 total and we’d need those tickets $1,200 and a hotel $700 on the low end and food $350 ($50/day) minimum – so a week (minimum) for 4 with the mouse is still $3100.
We could also cruise to Bermuda out of Boston and can do that relatively cheaply – $900pp for a cabin (but only the first 2 guests, guests 3 & 4 are free) and that could be it. Food’s included. Entertainment’s included. $1800 all in. + $500 misc. $2,300 all in. Maybe we’re going to Bermuda.
This is exactly, EXACTLY, the kind of discussion I’m looking for. EXACTLY.
OMG, I haven’t even read the rest of the comments but had to respond because that was my first thought – DISNEY. I have 2 kids that are 8 and 9 and I cannot believe what it would cost us to take them so we can spend most of time standing on lines. And I (and my husband) don’t even want to go but they do. It’s a real possibility that we won’t though because I truly am appalled that Disney is charging that much. They do it because they can completely forgetting that children are what made them so lucrative in the first place. They are pricing middle class families right out of their parks.
My husband has always wanted to go to Germany and this past fall his sister and her husband moved there. (The husband is in the army and is stationed there.) To MY husband, this meant YAY, he finally gets to go to Germany – and take the whole clan, because he can’t just leave the children at HOME.
I fought back pretty hard, because really? You want to take a 5-year-old, 3-year-old, and 10-month-old to Europe? Think of the cost of those plane tickets! They won’t remember it! And I am the stay-at-home mother who will suddenly be going on a very intense work trip. (Did that sentence make sense? This won’t be a vacation, it will be WORK.) Plus, the baby hadn’t been born yet at the time we were considering booking tickets, so I had no idea what temperament she’d have!
Anyway, he really, really, really wanted to do it. Something he’s dreamed of his whole life. So fine. I, personally, don’t think it’s anywhere near worth what it’s costing us. But he does. We leave Tuesday. Pray for us!
Yes, yes! Conflicted feelings! Not sure it’s worth it, but doing it anyway! THIS IS THE STUFF.
Germany with little kids is awesome. People on European airlines like Lufthansa are way kinder than American (they might have toys for the kids!), people in German pubs/etc are completely relaxed about kids (Kinderstuhl= high chair!). It’s SO relaxing to go to Germany and realize that people aren’t actually filled with crankiness about kids they way they are there. Getting the kids used to the time change won’t be spectacular, but once they’re adjusted it’ll be lovely. The large Intercity trains have “Kleinkindabteil” cars where they have spaces for people traveling with small children that are closed off (so the kids can make noise) and have tables and changing areas and some even had road/town carpeting and a toy horsey to ride on. A few example pictures here: https://www.flickr.com/gp/lakeline/gPbE7e, https://flic.kr/p/9NKkMr, https://flic.kr/p/9NGq6E
I am SO excited for you guys, I hope it’s amazing, but I really think despite the work of “vacation” with kids, you’ll have a wonderful time.
Regarding the main post: We don’t do a yearly vacation, we go visit my family in michigan and stay with them and stuff. But every OTHER year we take a larger trip abroad. We took each kid while they were still nursing but once weaned we left them with my family (which makes us super lucky that we can do that, I know). We’ve done Germany, Scotland, Germany, Ecuador, and this summer is Germany again. We have a Southwest Airlines Chase credit card that we use for everything and it paid the $1300 for my ticket so we only had to purchase my husband’s. We stay in smallish bed and breakfasts that are usually 60-80/night. We walk and use public transit instead of renting cars when possible. I’m not sure of totals because I’m terrible with math/finance stuff but it works out to be a lot of money that is COMPLETELY worth it to us. We want to start bringing the kids again but we’re going to wait until they’re old enough to really make memories – not because we don’t think it’s worth it for them but because 3 more airline tickets is EXPENSIVE.
I don’t know if you’re flying Lufthansa – but we flew this December with a one year (exactly one, his birthday was two days before we left) and they were really accommodating to us. Also there were at least three other babies on each flight back and forth to Frankfurt and they were all really nice too. You can do it!
Hope you have fun!
I’m in the same boat as you, I think because my parents never took Vacations. Instead they bought a canoe, and later a sailboat, and we drove to the Adirondacks and camped on islands. The first time I stayed at a hotel was on a Girl Scout field trip to Boston when I was 12. (I had also never been to Boston or NYC even though they were only three hours away!) So vacations other than camping are not anything I’ve ever done, and I too am unable to justify the expense. Twice we flew to Florida and stayed with friends; even though deeply discounted airfare was my only expense, it felt like a huge luxury.
YES. My parents too were the Frugal Sort. We tent-camped. We Drove to Visit Friends. We did not Spend Money.
My husband and I were just talking about this the other day! He grew up with only tent-camping vacations. My parents would save every bit of vacation money (and frequent flier miles from Dad’s job) and put enough together every 3-4 years to take a huge one – Europe or Alaska or something like that.
We think this has led to use changing roles as grown-ups – I’ve been to various parts of Europe four times. I feel EXTREMELY privileged to have done so, but also…kind of done. I don’t like the 7-hour plane rides. I don’t want to be the one in charge of children who don’t appreciate the experience (much easier to be said whiny child).
He, on the other hand, feels like it’s finally his time. It requires prioritizing and giving some things up, but we can afford it, so he wants to be the parents who take the children on these “big experience” trips.
those sound like vacations to me! Our vacations always involve camping, because it is cheaper. We did rent a house once, and that was nice. I assume that any vacation will cost at least $1500, what with food and lodging and gas, and yes, it took me a while to understand that.
We have never taken a plane, too expensive. We now budget $2000 total, and it is a priority to make those memories of going away as a family and doing something different from what we normally do. There were many years we weren’t able to do that, though. I am grateful we can do it now.
I guess I generally don’t like to spend more than 300 per person on airfare. I have found that booking 6 weeks ahead usually helps bring costs down.
I guess I generally spend 1000 to 1200 per week on accommodations. I have found booking a few months in advance can bring costs down. Bonus for free breakfast or included kitchen for small meals.
I guess I don’t like to go over 500 per week on a rental car.
Even if I can afford to spend more I just don’t want to. I feel like these numbers are the value of these things and I don’t like spending more.
Yes yes yes. Numbers, with feelings. Yes. The very thing.
I have to stop commenting on every comment now, but that doesn’t mean I’m not FEELING every comment.
Also… You have a family of 7. Anything times 7 is kind of a lot so you are allowed to get squirrelly!
Oooooo! I love vacations. Two things that keep me happy and bearable to be around are a trip planned and book handy. I get cranky if this is not the case.
Now! My ideal vacation scheme is this: one Big Family Trip, one weekend at the beach, one trip just me and the husband. For this, $5000 is my ideal budget. This is because our beach trip is to a cabin in a state park. We live an hour from New Orleans, which is also a cruise port. And we just don’t fly. I can do what I want if we fly. We are just lucky to live in driving distance from nice things. Even a trip to Disney is a one day drive.
I dream of doing bigger vacations. Stuff up North or even Europe. I will have to figure out how old the youngest will have to be by then. Basically, I am hoping my oldest will still want to go places with us when he is in college.
I don’t have anything helpful to add. I just want to say I am having these squirrelly thoughts too. My kids are just getting old enough that they hear friends talk about trips and our staycations with jaunts into the city for days at the zoo or science museum aren’t quite as great. But travel seems soooo expensive. Airfare, hotels, tickets and passes, and feeding everyone not out of our own freezer…. Gulp.
Staycations get old really fast!
Growing up, our family vacations were exclusively camping trips or visiting grandparents, except for one time my dad’s company paid for us to fly across the country and stay in nice hotels as some kind of bonus. Never anything with a per person cost…even though I only have one sibling, multiplying costs by four was enough to dissuade my parents.
Now that I have my own kids, my aspiration is to be able to budget to do a yearly trip to a rental house, similar to what it sounds like you did with your grandparents, maybe split with family some years if I can coordinate it. But I don’t know yet if the reality of braces & all those other big kid costs will get in the way of that, and even then I wouldn’t be expecting to pay airfare or any big costs beyond having a place to stay. (It helps that where I live is not glamorous, but within a few hours of several places that tourists travel halfway around the globe to visit, so we would only need to fly to get somewhere exotic rather than just vacationy).
Oh and conflicted feelings…these come in mostly because we are still at the age that many of our friends are getting married, or don’t have kids yet, and so it comes up fairly regularly that we have to choose between having $500 to I don’t know…buy ourselves some new clothes for the first time in years, or maybe take care of that place where it looks like the Kool-aid man was killed on our carpet….or attend one person’s wedding who decided that a resort town in June was the only thing that would make this event magical. We mostly go, because we can delude ourselves into thinking we will have more money later but will not have second chances to attend the weddings of lifelong friends (jokes on us in ten years when we’re still broke and they’re all getting remarried), but we definitely feel squirrely about it.
Oh! And I will say, because maybe its applicable, that we did do the rental place thing once already and we were able to do it much cheaper than we would have otherwise because we A) knew that it doesn’t really matter which time of year you go to San Diego, the weather is going to be the same (so we went in February…harder with kids in school but maybe not impossible) and B) split the cost of a place with my brother and his wife. It is DEFINITELY cheaper to get one four bedroom vacation home than two two bedroom ones.
Hotel costs – until I had kids, Motel 6 was my default place to stay. (Now that I have them, I mostly don’t travel but also rationalize paying more because crying babies need thicker walls and my toddler is going to TOUCH EVERYTHING…but I think with slightly older kids I’d go back). Obviously you don’t want to stay in any hotel or motel that is somewhere you don’t feel comfortable walking around at night, but when Motel 6 is right across the street from Ramada, I am perfectly happy to stay at the Motel 6 (as long as there is a non-smoking room) and spend the extra $20+ on something else.
Growing up, whenever we went on vacation it was never all of it at once — airfare, rental care, accommodations, etc. Like, we went camping, so it was gas and food costs. Or we flew to New York but stayed with family. Or once we went to Europe, but my mom was on business so a lot of it was compensated. So I guess that’s been my model for vacations, because it does seem overwhelming (and on my grad student paycheck, unaffordable) to have to pay for every aspect of it. When my boyfriend and I traveled, it was always flying to stay with friends or family, or going somewhere within driving distance and staying in a cheap hotel.
But again, my teaching income is tiny, and my parents have Depression-era views of finances, so I’m not a good judge of how much is actually reasonable to pay for a vacation. I do think vacations are really fun and memorable, so if it’s within your budget to go to Florida and you’re excited about the prospect, I think you should do it! My mom and I went on a cruise last year (for free, long story), and before that I would have thought a cruise was exorbitantly expensive for just a week, but it was SUCH a great week. If I had a real job, I would totally do it again and pay full price.
We took a car trip to a condo on a beach and spent $1000. Know awesome restaurants or outings or specials. No one needed souvenirs or awesome restaurants because the pool and beach were enough. But we had one in diapers and two others who are under 5. It was hard driving 30 something hours and not being pampered at all on vacation, and my Ming saving husband had a hard time budgeting for that experience.
We have been saving $100/months for over 2 years for our 10th wedding anniversary. He is pumped about that, and I think it’s his money management style- he has had 2 years to cope with the feelings of money coming off our budget and planning it. I can see benefits of monthly vacation budgeting, with big lump sum in comparison.
I can sympathize with this SO MUCH. And I don’t even have kids – multiplying things out with the extra restaurant meals, etc. gets even more emotionally laden.
My partner really likes vacations, as they’re the main way that he can unplug his brain from his work. And trips to visit family are a different kind of work for his introverted self, so they don’t count. So, we tend to do about 1 big vacation each year. We don’t like where we live or most of the places within a 14-hour drive, so they almost all involve flying (sadly). For plane tickets anything above $350/person gets me twitchy, but I’ll (grudgingly) go up to $425 if we feel we don’t have other good options. Anything under $275 makes me happy. (I used to live in a hub city, and I miss the cheaper and easier travel options a lot.)
We haven’t dealt with international things other than Canada because the time we’d spend traveling hasn’t seemed like it’d be worth it, plus I’ve got some food allergies that make me leery of trying to navigate any kind of language barrier.
We like visiting cities, so often can forego a rental car to use their public transit. When that’s not an option, I *love* Hotwire, since I can regularly get a car for less than $15/day pre-tax – we skip the extra insurance. Hotwire’s ok for hotels, but if we’re going to be there for a while and want to make sure we have a location we like or certain amenities (like a kitchenette), I’ll book directly. I tend to get squirrelly at anything over $115/night/room, but I’ll sometimes go higher for the kitchenette, since it makes meals *way* cheaper.
We tend to splurge on meals and things like museums, since our area doesn’t have much that we like in those areas. It varies a lot based on where we go, though, and we don’t have a strict budget for this stuff. We tend to just cut back afterwards if we feel like we spent more than we wanted to.
For me, a yearly vacation isn’t something I’d spend money on if it were just me. But it means a lot to my partner, and I like him, so I’ve made myself forcibly let go of my stress around it so that I can enjoy myself. I really do like the ability to go see more art and eat more different kinds of food than we have access to here, but I just don’t know if it’s worth $1300+ before we’ve even picked up a menu.
I am in the same boat as your husband. I tend to be on the introverted side as well, so anytime a “vacation” entails staying at someone else’s house (family or friends), I consider it a trip, not a vacation.
Our vacation budget is usually about $3-$4,000 for our family of four. I try to keep airfare under $400 per person, hotels at $125 a night, and we eat breakfast in the hotel room to save a little on food costs–bagels with peanut butter, fruit, etc.
We went to NYC two years ago and rented an apartment in Brooklyn, which was bigger & cheaper than a hotel in Manhattan. We went to DC a few years earlier and found a great hotel deal on Expedia, used public transport to avoid renting a car, and visited all the free sites & museums.
I have a friend with 5 kids, and all their vacations are camping ones. I don’t like the idea of cooking on a trip, but they really enjoy it. To me, the best part of a trip is the family memories, and in the end the destination matters less than the fun you have together. :)
Oooh this is so good – I work in a school and have summers off (and 3 other 1-2 week scheduled breaks in the year) so this adds a lot of pressure to the vacation planning. If you don’t take advantage of it you are WASTING YOUR LIFE! Add to this that the private school I work at has very wealthy parents – so the kids I teach and that are my kids classmates are always going to Hawaii and Mexico and Europe and Australia every break – forget Disneyland, these kids are travelling more than I have – and I have done my share. But even if they are rich, it really boggles my mind how they can afford $40,000 of travel a year…it’s a mind trip.
We bought a house two years ago and that immediately put the damper on trips, money-wise. The first summer we camped in Montana and Yellowstone and met up with my family and it was great – but I felt a little cheated, I will admit. Last summer I had to travel home for a wedding and stay there for a few weeks – and that was it. Not this year I swore. So we put aside some money for Christmas and bought 3 tickets to Europe for $4500 – but it includes a 3 day stopover in Iceland (see how 3 is SO much cheaper than 7?) Then we put aside some more and booked half of our accommodation in the expensive cities like Paris and London and have budgeted $200 a night for hotels/airbnb – and the trip is 23 days long. So yeah, that’s a LOT of money when you look at it like say, a bathroom remodel. Or tuition for college. Or a new used car. Or hey, how about a tent trailer so we could go on LOTS of camping trips for years to come?
So now that we have booked it, I have some remorse. But if we hadn’t, I might have been sulky all summer, hopefully quietly. I think I’ve learned that it will be okay to have a few camping summers after this blowout.
Added to vacation angst is that most of our vacations tend to be to visit family. We live in a different city than our parents and siblings so at least twice a year, usually three, there is a trip to See Family. Very, very rarely do they reciprocate (though I think we live in a very nice city and have room to stay) because they all have larger families and not as much money, to put it bluntly. I am always happy to see family but I also get kinda crabby to always use the vacation time and money to visit their places. We spend at least $3000 a year visiting family who we are happy to see, but in towns we don’t really care to see as often – and again, that money could go pretty far for other budget line items. It would just be nice if it was a little more equal or we could meet in the middle more.
But when I look back at our lives together as a family – when I was a kid and now with my own – it is the vacations that really stand out and I remember fondly. So it’s worth it, right???
We fly our family of 5 across the country at least twice a year, but this is always to see and stay with family. We haven’t done a family vacation not involving extended family, but my kids are very little. In the past, we each had an Alaskan airline credit card and every year we got two $100 ( plus taxes, if I recall) companion flights (each had our own credit about to get the two compassion ticket.) This saved money, but was a huge rigmarole to book the tickets all together online. It involves many open tabs and a solid 30-45 minutes without kids around. Now, that airline doesn’t work for where we travel, so we found a credit card that we get 2% back, so that held us not feel so bad. And because cross-country flights with tiny ones is lots of work, I only want to do driving vacations when we get around to it. So, credit card deals might be worth looking into since you will be dropping lots of cash on any kind of trip. But it could add stress to your life, it’s late, hope this made sense!
Oh my word, so many typos. Companion tix, not compassion. Too lazy to correct the rest :)
For the past few years we have taken a week’s holiday to Mexico where we stay at an all-inclusive resort. All in (flights, hotel including food, no rental car needed, and we aren’t the type to buy souvenirs) it is around $1200/person (we are a family of 4). It seems like a lot (I had SIMPLE holidays growing up) but here is how I justify it:
-we meet up with grandparents and cousins at the resort so it is a family holiday and a chance to spend time with close relatives who live on the other side of the country from us. Lots of family time in a fun place but no one has to ‘host’ and cook etc…
-we live in Canada – winter is long where we live and getting somewhere sunny helps everyone’s sanity. Going anywhere warm is always going to include flights for us and is therefore always going to cost a lot.
Having said that, I still feel torn about all kinds of money issues. Even though this is something we CAN afford I wonder whether we SHOULD be ‘squandering’ money on this kind of thing….because ‘clean water in Africa’ etc…
Some different vacation feelings. relationship feelings. I grew up with variety in vacations. Some years were a flight/hotel to Florida for Disney/baseball spring training for a week. A couple years were a week at a cottage on a nearby lake. Some years were several weekend stays in nearby big city. Some years were several weeks of camping. One year was a giant camping road trip coast-to-coast. In my teen years, my family had a trailer at a campground that we visited every weekend and most of the summer (my mother was a teacher). I like all of that. Unfortunately, my husband likes NONE of THAT. We are vacation incompatible. His idea of a vacation is a resort. (boring to me.) or stay home and do nothing. (our children are 3, 5, and 7. To stay home and do nothing is prison, not vacation!)
It only recently occurred to me that if we are vacation-incompatible, we may be retirement incompatible. gulp.
So my background is that we took a fair amount of trips growing up. By the time I’d graduated HS, I’d been to places like Hawaii, New York, some other places that were family destinations and relatively short driving spans. (We drove to Southern California & Utah lots) but see, I never really enjoyed it. It was okay, but traveling, I’ve decided after 30 years is just not my THING. My husband’s family rarely traveled as a family at all, so thankfully he can take it or leave it on the traveling deal. However, I think the kids LOVE traveling. So far we’ve done small things like a 6hr drive to the beach & whatnot all costing +\- $1000 total.
Well recently we decided to do a big trip out to St. Louis to see his side of the family. Taking all our kids with us for approx a week. The plane fare alone for our 5 member family was $1000+, and frankly we got a smoking deal on it. Thankfully we stayed with family, so we saved the cost of two hotel rooms, and even borrowed a car from said amazing family, so saved there too. I don’t even think I could have wrapped my head around the costs had we not have used family. Heck, the only time we went to Disney was when it was semi-covered as a work thing.
I just don’t want to toss my money away on experiences I don’t 100% love. (And dear heavens do I hate flying with children. Even ones who can be entertained for hours with electronic devices- it is still torture)
Growing up we did a camping/national park/road trip vacation most years. Always driving. We were in southern ca so did go to Disney sometimes but it was relatively cheaper then I think. Only plane trips were to visit family in Iowa so only cost was the plane since we stayed and ate with family.
As adults with two kids we have developed a system of sorts. Hubby is a teacher so we do vacation each summer and our agreement is three years of road trip/ camping and year four (or five) is a “big” trip with airfare and international destinations. Five years ago we went to Europe heavily subsidized by generous in laws. This summer we are going for six (!!!) weeks to Costa Rica. But plane tix were way cheaper than Europe (about $700/person) and In country expenses will be relatively low compared to domestic destinations. We rented a cheap house for a month ($1000 for entire month) and won’t do much/any expensive sight seeing. The cost is making me gulp but I mostly would rather spend money on travel than new clothes or cars or house stuff. And we’ve saved up so we can afford it without putting it on a credit card. Now I just hope the cheap house we rented is livable :)
Our annual trip to Vegas is about $2000 for the two of us. Flights, hotel, car, food, tickets, souvenirs.
For Kevin, it’s the experience mixed with “I work hard to be able to enjoy this”. While I look at like we are making memories while taking a break from our lives.
We designate funds we receive annually for this trip so we don’t have angst over it. However, I do find it stressful contemplating saving or planning for an additional trip.
I love this discussion. Growing up we went on 4 vacations total, all driving except one 1-hour flight. Since I turned 18, my mother’s side of the family all goes to a rental cabin on a lake in Kentucky. (I’m 43 now.). My husband knows that this trip has been non-negotiable, bless him, and all the cousins’ kids (who are now truly the kids, not us middle aged people) think that it is the best trip in the world. It is very cheap because our parents pay for the stay, and we all cook, so the only cost is the 16-hour-each-way drove for the 5 of us. I am torn. We are lucky that my family are the people who we have the best time with. But, my husband grew up with actual vacations to actual vacation spots, and he would like room service and tropical on occasion. It is so much more expensive to do that, and I feel that my view of acceptable vacation spending is skewed.
I love not camping and any time we talk vacation, even Disney World my husband says LETS CAMP to which I very nicely say no. Actually I think I shout and scream a little, camping sucks and I’ll only do it under extreme duress. We live in Alaska and camping is everywhere, if you don’t camp you’re doing it wrong. So for us a REAL vacation is outside to the lower 48 is spendy, we’ve done it twice with our two youngest and we spend roughly 10 days and about 5,000 dollars to do it. This next trip I think we’re going to throw in a cruise because 99% of everything to do on a cruise is included, we’ll be on a kid friendly cruise of course. The prices seem fair, like 249 for 5 days for adults and cheaper for kids.
Here’s how I make them seem LESS painful. I price out each section, so flights first, then hotels, then entertainment and cars and such. I price it out and pay for it inspections, so one month I pay for tickets, the next I pay a deposit on the hotel and then pay into a special fund put aside to pay for the hotel because you pay when you’re done not before you stay, then I pay for any special things like disney tickets, a car I do last because they’re plentiful and cheap. I also set up another fund for food and put in about 100 bucks every two weeks until I have about 100 dollars per day of vacation set aside, we usually spend less but it’s a nice cushion to have extra set aside. I know it sounds hinky with setting money aside but it works without killing us budget wise.
I grew up in a frugal family that did not vacation much. My father had many jobs in foreign countries, so we traveled as a family to many countries, but they weren’t “vacations.”
With my own family of five we travel a fair amount. We used to live on the East Coast, and my inlaws own a house in Costa Rica, so every year we would take the kids to Costa Rica for a week. The airfare was about $400 per ticket out of NYC, and we stayed at their house, and I have a kid with severe food allergies so we never eat out, and we would rent a car for a week for about $600. So for about 7 years we vacationed for about $2700.
Then we moved to the West Coast a few years ago, and the tickets to Costa Rica at any time my kids have off from school are about $1100 PER PERSON. So….we’ve only gone once since we moved out here, and only because we went at a time they did not have off from school, and I found a great deal for $600 a ticket.
Our vacations now are once a year to the East Coast to visit family. We stay with family, we buy our tickets with airline points, and borrow a car from family members, so that has been fairly inexpensive.
We have been discussing another trip to Italy to visit my husband’s family (his father is the only one to live in the US; all of his relatives live in Italy). We’ve gone twice in the last ten years, once before we got married ($1000 in airline tix, maybe $500 in food and traveling costs), and once with the kids ($4000 in airfare from NYC–really great tickets at $750 apiece–about another $1000 in car rental and food, but we stay with family). Traveling to Europe from the East Coast is much cheaper than from the West Coast.
Unfortunately from LA to Rome during high season the tickets are $2200+, which means that just to walk on the plane will cost us $11,000. Just airfare. Plus we need a car ($2000 rental for a week), and the kids are old enough we could do some day trips (more money). I’m saving for it but its certainly not a trip where we are like sure! Lets go to Italy this year! Its more like Sure! Lets go to Italy in five years after we save up a giant hunk of money! It s also a long travel time that requires very careful planning on how we will feed our kid with food allergies.
Over the last two years we have also been doing some smaller vacations with the kids, like long weekends, using VRBO. This past Christmas we did four days in Palm Springs in a vacation rental, and last August we went to Lake Arrowhead for four days. We bring a ton of board games and movies and food from our pantry (and a crock pot and a breadmaker and a ridiculous amount of food—this may not be someone else’s idea of vacation, but we stay in houses with kitchens and bring food so that we have a kitchen to cook for our allergy kid). We might do one activity a day (in Palm Springs one day we visited Joshua Tree, another day we took a tram to a mountain top), but the rest of the time we just play board games and sit around. In Lake Arrowhead the house we rented had a pool table, and although I planned a bunch of outdoor activities, the kids only wanted to play pool. For three full days, pretty much.
In case I haven’t used the words “food allergies” enough in this comment, I’ll recap with our vacations are generally driven by what we can do/where we can stay that accomodates our food needs. We don’t stay in hotels unless they have a kitchen in suite. Although we generally save on food because we aren’t eating out every meal, we pay more for accomodations and generally aren’t in the best locations because we need a kitchen. (I know this isn’t a factor for most people, but it is a huge factor for us.)
I try to do an every-other year thing with our vacations. One year is a bigger/farther/more expensive trip- with lots of sight seeing and things to do. And then one year is renting a cabin on a lake within a 2-3 hour driving distance. We hang out at the cabin & swim in the lake and that’s it. Maybe some mini-golf.
With our family of 5, I always try to get a house or a condo with a kitchen. It gives us more room and we can make some breakfasts/lunches or sometimes even grill for dinner. It’s more work and less “vacation-y” for me because I have to shop and sometimes cook, but it saves $$ and the extra space/privacy is nice. I usually plan $100-$125/night for all of us. I try to keep it under $1000 for a week if I can. (though I find this creeping up to $1200 in the very popular vacation spots).
So far, we haven’t flown yet (our youngest is 4) but we are looking to do that later this year. I have no idea how/what to price that at yet, so I am following the comments here with interest.
I know what you mean about wondering how other families do it- I have friends with families who have been to Disney multiple times (sometimes within 1 year!) Or who ski in the winter and go someplace else in summer. Or they cruise for spring break and then go to Hawaii every December. Or they have a cabin “up north” that they go to all summer long. Not all of them are double income households either! I don’t know how they afford it.
I do think that the experiences and the memories are worth the cost and hassle though- my kids remember our smaller/cheaper vacations just as much as they do the bigger trips. They remember the things they did, not how much it cost. And I find that I do too. I remember the time spent with them, and not that I had to make jelly sandwiches all day every day.
Swis, this is stressing me out.
I grew up with camping trips, but DH grew up with month-long international adventures: his family has been to Samoa, the Cook Islands, Hawaii, Nepal (his favorite place), East Africa, West Africa, Europe, northern South America, Israel, New England, and the American South.
But they don’t think of themselves as wealthy. They just prioritize travel over new cars and remodeling (also they make lots more money than my parents).
But I can’t see us affording vacations like that. DH has wanted to visit India for years. It sounds nightmarish to me to take kids on a trip like that. I don’t know how his mother did it with five. But to pay for that? Please, sign me up for a cruise! I would love to pay for a very long cruise over airfare to Asia!
Alas, I doubt I will ever get him on a cruise. He believes that there is nothing to do onboard and that the trips to shore are for chump tourists.
I hope our next job pays enormously well, otherwise we will have to scrimp and save for years to visit far-off lands.
Tl;dr: paying for vacation sucks. Good luck.
Maybe you will have a good enough time that you don’t regret not spending the money on home improvements.
Dispite living in uk, it’s almost cheaper to go to Florida than Paris Disney, and if I went for two or three weeks then it is cheaper !
We went to centre parcs for our kids birthdays, January, I was telling friends about it, they looked to book in March, what cost us a few hundred, is now thousands…. ! So I think that often changes things, school holiday costs.
I love getting away, but post kids getting away and pre kid getting away require different things for us at least. I do have plenty of friends in both camps though, and I’m often surprised!
I think right now, with the age of my kids, even if I had a huge chunk of spare money, or a credit card, a long haul flight alone puts me off!
I think it really depends on the values you develop growing up as well as current logistics and resources (time, $, energy, tolerance for boredom and discomfort and inconvenience). I grew up camping with my family every year and a big overseas trip every 3-4 yrs, paid for out of inheritances and instead of other savings. My husband grew up with visiting family. Before we had kids he and I would travel to south east Asia annually, where the costs for our cats at the cattery would be more expensive than our accommodation; and where food and transport was super cheap, and holidays were about seeing all the things. Some holidays we spent less away than we would at home. Now we have kids we love places like Club Med (previously we thought this was a ghastly idea), so it’s actually a holiday for us. Some club med off season deals are about $1000 per adult for a week including all accomm, food, most alcoholic drinks and most resort facilities. Resort kids clubs were extra (but SO worth it). Also, coming from Australia just about anywhere overseas involves an 8-10 hr flight as a given (later this year my husband has to go to Europe for a conference and will travel for over 24hrs straight just to get there). So post kids we visit family annually and will do a bigger overseas trip every 3-4 yrs (which might cost $10k+), and budget for it.
Our vacations have expanded greatly in cost over the years, but are generally to one place – Disney World. It’s the only place where we all have fun. We have tried the nature vacations – kids hate it and as I have gotten older I have no real patience for it (another waterfall?? eh). We have tried the urban vacations – I feel like its more of my every day life (we live in a large city). We are not adventure vacation people. I was forced to camp as a kid (HATED it). My kids and I don’t like long flights – not good for Europe or Asia. So – it’s back to the mouse.
How many times? My oldest is 24 and she has been 18 times. My youngest is 19 and she has been 15 times.
We always stay on the property. We started off in the moderates (only with 40% off PINs). We would buy a year passport and go back in 50 weeks. We used frequent flyer miles (which used to mean actual free tickets – none of this fee nonsense). We went once for 11 days and spent less than $1500 (for 4 people including everything). Disney on a dime (or at least a dime in Disney currency).
Now, however, our income is up substantially, and my tolerance for everything annoying is diminished. For the past 5 trips we stayed at The Contemporary. We now (last two trips) stay in the tower facing the theme park. $800 per night. Yep – two nights in the hotel cost more than our entire 11 days did 20 tears ago). And – it is worth it. So worth it. I actually wish they woyld increase prices to the point of thinning the crowds.
I grew up poor. Nonworking parents. In a neighborhood I call No Collar (people sitting on their porches all day wearing undershirts or no shirts not even looking for work). Spending money still hits me in ways that it never hits my husband (who grew up upper middle class all the way). I totally have to do the “that’s what things cost” bit to myself. What we spend on vacation is in some ways ridiculous – but we can afford it. Retirement – fully funded. House (and second house) – totally paid off. College and medical school for both kids – completely saved for. Debt – zero. With all of those parameters being met – $10K for a week of the best vacation that we can enjoy together is money I enjoy spending.
pre babies, my husband and I would spend anywhere from 1200-3000 for a 5 day vacation. We took one every year for our anniversary. Mexico, San Diego, Oregon. What really works out better for us is the weekend trips of 500 dollars or so. Those are less stress and easier to swallow financially. Tahoe, camping, Monterey, snowboarding, etc. But I still feel like we need to get away for a week every year or so. I’m okay with 3000 once per year. When my daughter was 9 mis we decided to go to maui for 7 days. It was 6000. It would have been worth it, but my daughter and husband got really teally sick while we were there, and we ended up spending more money on an out of network medical clinic, because she had a 106 degree fever. So that made the whole trip so stressful and not worth it. We had to pack, pay and arrange for a cat sitter and person to water our house , etc etc. It made some great memories and great photos, but worth it? I don’t know. I think we’ll stick to the 3 night extended weekend trips. Way less stress for me. I’m trying to justify going to the coast this spring with my toddler and newborn, and part of me just says stay home and save money, you have a newborn, but I feel like our toddler needs experiences and we adults need a change of scenery. Which reminds me, I still haven’t talked to my husband about this.
Travel is just not super important to my husband and I, but change o scenery and rest and relaxation is.
I had to reply to this because we took a weekend getaway when my youngest was 8 or 10 weeks old. I felt a little crazy doing it, like it was going to be a giant disaster. Travel? With a new baby? Instead, it was one of my favorite vacations we’ve taken as a family. My almost three-year-old loved the B&B we stayed at so much, she kept asking when we were going back for months. We even included a trip to a Major Local Amusement Park that went way more smoothly than expected. We got to do something my older daughter enjoyed where we could focus on her more than the new baby (not as easily done at home). It can be done, and might be so worth it!
I FULLY admit that we are borderline ridiculous about spending on vacations. NUTS! We have it justified (somewhat) in our heads but you’re not interested in that so….
We live in Georgia so Atlanta Travel Hub (YAY!). Oh, and we have two kids who are 9, 11 (right now).
Prior to 2013–Smallish vacations to drivable places.
2013–Decided our life goal would be ‘experiences’.
2013–Disney Cruise to Alaska with extra time in Vancouver–10K with cruise/excursions/flights/food. Best.Vacation.Ever!
2013–Disney World–10K with Disney luxury hotel in Concierge/drove down/there the week of Christmas.
(This makes it look like we are Disney people but we aren’t. We LOVE their cruise line because it’s so clean, elegant, family-friendly. None of us particularly care for the characters.)
2014–Small trip to Florida (my family is there). About $2500 for hotel/food/fun.
2014–Universal Studios, Florida over Thanksgiving. About $3000 for on-sight hotel/food/tickets.
2014–Adults-only trip to Charleston. About $1000.
2015–Nothing so far BUT HUGE, WILD-ASS trip to Europe planned. Disney Cruise to Baltic with additional time in Paris, London, Dublin, and Copenhagen. We will be gone for 21 days. Right now? Cost at 20K before food/walking around traveling expenses. This is absolutely crazy and we know it. We ARE, BY NO MEANS, RICH. We don’t even break 100K per year in salary. This is seriously costing me most of my income for this year (am teacher). We are just committed to traveling and giving our kids experiences. And we decided we HAVE to do these kinds of trips NOW while we still like our children. I am anticipating no longer enjoying having my children around when they hit puberty so our travel experiences will greatly diminish in the next few years.
2016–I just (last night) put deposit down on another cruise to Alaska (not Disney) with the in-laws. Going full-throttle and getting the suite. Anticipating it will be around 15K.
On docket for planning–Yellowstone Adventure, Italy, Ireland, Northern California, Iceland…
Just to note (and write a novel), I am very good at finding great travel deals. It doesn’t look like it from my overall budgets above but we are hotel snobs (okay, *I* am a hotel snob). I usually only stay in fancy places with concierge. We also do a lot of cool stuff while we are traveling. So I could have EASILY done the Disney Alaska cruise for 5K total but we stayed in a super nice hotel in Vancouver, we took expensive excursions, etc.
Growing up, I stayed in awful, cheap motels while we traveled–which we did ONLY to see and stay with family. Also, we camped at campgrounds–in a smallish tent—with 7 people. We drive old cars, live in a small house, and don’t have many other expenses so it’s travel for us.
Oh, and another note–we NEVER thought we would be cruise people but it is the easiest way to see new things without having to stress about travel details. Also, if you book far enough in advance, you can pay some each month until you reach your pay-off date. So you can chunk $200 into your account every month or every paycheck and it doesn’t feel as expensive as blowing 5K in one, big shot. Does that make sense?
Interesting topic. I grew
Up in an urban environment with parents who would never have even thought to camp/drive long distances/do
Something outside. We always took airplane/hotel/interesting location vacations, and many trips to Disney world, as we lived about 45 mins away by plane. I am VERY much the product of this. I went camping once and hated it. I get crazy if anyone suggests driving anywhere that is more than 4 hours away when *airplanes* exist. Perhaps if I had grown up doing outdoorsy adventure-type vacations I would have felt differently, but I kept thinking that there is a *reason* hotels exist-it’s so we don’t have to sleep on the cold, hard ground. That being said, we have 1 kid and 2 incomes, so flying, hotel stays, Disney tickets, etc aren’t nearly as daunting as they would be for 7 people. That is a *tremendous* factor that you can’t ignore.
For me, “worth” doesn’t really factor in. It is straight up “how much money do I have at the time of booking and how much do I expect to have at payoff and travel time.” I may be an odd case, because we don’t have credit cards, so we can’t pay a chunk of money for a vacation, then pay it off in smaller amounts.
That means we usually go for a driving vacation (we don’t mind long distances, as long as they aren’t multi-day drives) – we like to drive overnight and start the day at our destination.
We generally rent a house or cabin somewhere, and our cost is usually between $1000 and $1500 (we love mountainous areas, which are cheaper than beach). It’s usually half to book and ham before we go. It is still hard to get that much together, but we manage. Then mist meals are cooked in to save money. We usually get a place on the river, so we have free activities like fishing, swimming, kayakng, tubing, geocaching. Then we’ll have a couple meals out and an activity like rafting.
I too tend to fret about vacations. Out of everyone in my family, I love to travel the most. I guess we are lucky that our kids are homebodies and don’t really care about vacations, AND we get off easy because their other parents often take them on vacations during the summer – a week at the beach in FL; a cruise to the Bahamas; DisneyWorld, etc.
As a “rule,” my husband and I like to do a trip for us one year, then a family trip the next. When we are doing OUR trip, we take the kids somewhere close that is drivable; we have stayed in a cabin on the lake twice, just a couple hours away, the cabin is super cheap like $120/night and we only stay for a weekend; we rent a paddle boat; the kids swim in the lake and the pool and think we’re going on a full-fledged vacation when really it doesn’t cost us much at all.
I am not really big on long car rides, esp. with kids. 6 hours is my limit. So I would rather fly, even though that ups the cost.
This year we were thinking about going to FL for a week or Chicago for a long weekend. Costs are about the same. We asked the kids and they chose Chicago as they’d never been there. My husband insisted we stay on Michigan Ave even though he’s not a hotel snob at ALL bc he wanted to be in the center of things. So yes, we are spending, per night, WAY more on the hotel than I would typically do, but we found one that has a full kitchen so we will be able to save $ cooking at home since eating out in the city is very $$$$. (We are a family of 4 by the way)
When I was investigating Florida (we live in St. Louis BTW and COULD drive to Florida; plenty of people here do, but like I said: I don’t do long car trips. Chicago is only 5hrs away), even though I found really good flights to where we were thinking of going (Panama City Beach), AND I found some great home/condo rentals via vbro.com, it was going to cost MORE to GET there via airplane than it would to STAY at our destination for 5 days. So, driving is usually going to be cheaper. But it depends on where you live and how easily you can get places.
My husband and I have been saving up to redo our kitchen. And our kitchen really needs re-done; we have the plans, just not all the funds yet. But if I have to choose between kitchen and vacation, vacation will win for me each and every time. But I don’t really cook so the kitchen doesn’t bother me as much as it does him, and this year I guess he won: family weekend in Chicago + hopefully kitchen vs. say big family Disney trip or something.
Hm, let’s see. I’m planning a week’s trip to Atlanta with my partner in a month or so, and while we haven’t bought any of the things yet, this is what I’m expecting in terms of cost.
Hotel: $110/night for probably seven nights. With taxes let’s call it an even $800.
Car rental: $300ish for the week.
Flight? We might just drive down, but if we fly I’ll expect to pay around $300 each for the round-trip ticket. Flights are where these things get crazy in my experience. If you go to a city with a major airport, that’s on the same half of the continent as you, $300 or less is pretty easy to find. If you try to fly into a little city with a small airport, it gets crazy-expensive real fast. When I go visit my best friend in Springfield, IL I fly into St. Louis and she drives and hour and a half to pick me up from there, because it’s way more reasonable than my flying straight into Springfield.
Food: I usually budget for one meal out, plus groceries (making sure to get a hotel that has mini-fridge and microwave.) We’ll probably splurge some and get drinks several times, so let’s say average $40 each per day, and an extra $50 for food we can keep in the room and eat.
So, adding in a little extra for unexpected expenses, I’m expecting the whole trip to cost between $1800 and $2500 depending whether we fly or not. That’s for two of us to spend a week in a major city.
I can’t afford that kind of trip on my own without saving up for a long time; we’ll be dividing the costs proportionate our respective incomes (which means my partner will pay for most of it.) If I was traveling alone, I would stay with friends rather than in a hotel, and budget much more strictly for food. I’d probably swing the whole trip for $600 or less.
$40/day for food seems really low to me in a big city like Atlanta if you’re having drinks! We try to not eat out for breakfast/lunch/snacks when we travel but with taxes, tip, & drinks, an average dinner would be way more than $40 for 2 people in a big city unless you’re eating at a BBQ joint or something (which would be delicious, don’t get me wrong!). I think food is an area where we underestimate our budget all the time.
Oh – and hotel tax was 23% when I was last in Anchorage. It’s huge in DC too. When we priced a hotel in DC, the tax alone equaled another night of the room rate!
I love this thread! My partner’s family vacations every summer at beaches about 1800 miles from our home. Since we don’t live close to them, this is usually the one time each year that we see everyone (save for his parents; now that there are grand-babies they come visit us once or twice a year). So that’s a default “vacation” we take every year. There are a few houses we rent and the beach is gorgeous and I would never say no, particularly since it’s the only time we see his siblings and I doubt very much that our generation will continue the tradition (his siblings’ part of the vacation is subsidized fairly well by his parents). But in the past year or so we have talked about doing our own thing. It’s very very very hot the time of year we go, and my partner is very fair-skinned, so we usually go to the beach for about an hour in the early morning and maybe another hour in the late afternoon. The rest of the time we are hunkered down in the air-conditioned house we share with my SIL and her family. The arrangement was not the most ideal last year as our kiddo and hers had different nap and bedtime schedules, so there was always an exuberant youngster being hushed. We pay about $900 for our half of the house we stay in. Historically we have flown ($700ish), but since we now have two babies – and all of the accompanying gear – and would have to buy a ticket for our eldest, we may try driving this year. I do appreciate having a full kitchen; I hate spending a ton of money going out to eat crap food on vacation. My FIL buys a ton of groceries and cooks every night, so we often eat with them, but the wrinkle is that they generally eat around 7 or 8pm… Bedtime for our babies.
Price savings wise – my mom took me to Paris for a few days when I graduated from college, and we happened to be there on Bastille Day, where things like the Louvre were open but free! And there were fireworks (the best I’ve ever seen) over the Seine! We didn’t plan the trip that way but if I ever go back it would be July 14th.
We had a babymoon in Puerto Rico and did it fairly cheaply. We rented a small flat in the heart of old San juan (about $1000) and could walk everywhere. We spent money on dinners but mostly ate breakfast and lunch in our kitchenette. There are lots of old forts, beaches, farmers’ markets etc. that are fairly easily walkable there, too. Though this was a few years ago and I’ve been hearing it’s not so safe now. Still, looking for an area with a lot of free/cheap and walkable entertainment can help cut costs – our only car use was a cab from the airport (and back a week later) for about $20 each time.
Let’s just say our two week anniversary trip to Thailand was cheaper than our family six day trip to disney (during discount says with a super cheap rental house).
We’re now saving up so we can take the kids, or at least a the older two, to Thailand with us.
Growing up, my family didn’t have much money, but I feel like we went on a vacation of some sort every year. Always somewhere within driving distance of home. I grew up in Northern Illinois, so the Wisconsin Dells was big, but we also visited such esteemed places as Des Moines, Iowa and Hannibal, Missouri. Just a place to get away and break the routine and stay in a hotel so my mom didn’t have to cook for a week. I never had a concept of how much it cost, but I knew that it was a thing my parents definitely saved up for because they valued the time away. I never flew on an airplane until I was graduating from college and looking for a job.
Now, I live in upstate NY, and have two kids who are 5 & 7 and they’ve been on planes multiple times each. My family is still in Illinois, so we go visit there at least once a year – sometimes drive, sometimes fly, and in a few weeks we are going to take the train. I feel like visiting family does not count as a vacation. It mostly seems like the opposite of a vacation! I try to make sure we take an actual vacation somewhere about every year or18months at the most.
Two years ago we did Disneyworld. We didn’t really plan it, but my husband was spending a lot of time in Orlando for work, so once the kids got out of school (end of June! not the best time to go!) we flew down and met him there and stayed in his work hotel. My mom and mother-in-law also joined us. I’m glad we did it; the kids still talk about it. And it had been a place that my mom had wanted to go since she was a child and had never been. Nor had I. It was a fun experience. That said, I’m still not convinced it was worth the money we paid. Disney is so expensive! We didn’t pay for our hotel (which was not on property) or for my husbands airfare. And we had a few park tickets left over from when my husband’s family was there in the 80’s which Disney still honored. We were only there for 5 days, only went to a park for 3 of them (only 2 for my husband because he was actually working!) and for the 4 of us (the moms paid their own way) the trip still cost almost $3000!
Now, compare that to this past summer when we had a much lower-key vacation but I know my husband and I enjoyed it very much more. We drove down to the Lancaster, Pennsylvania area for 8 days. We saw and did so many fun things: Dutch Wonderland, Gettysburg, Strasburg trains, Hershey, National Aquarium in Baltimore, and more. This also cost us about $3000, but I feel like we got so much more out of it.
So after writing all that out, it is apparent to me that I think $3000 is an appropriate amount to spend on a vacation for our family! We do budget and very consciously save money for vacations, but even then I feel like it’s hard to spend the money!
In the past we have rented houses through homeaway.com. This saved us money by allowing us to cook (usually just breakfasts and maybe every other dinner were eaten at the house) We also rented dog-friendly houses and took our dog with us which saved a LOT of money in boarding costs for her. And we enjoyed having her with us. (Not for everyone! Or every dog! But this was awesome for us.)
Also, this is probably very dorky, but I really enjoy a good factory tour on vacation. They are usually free, you learn about how things are made, and you usually get samples at the end! Nothing better. It’s a great way to get an hour or two worth of entertainment on the cheap.
My husband and I both grew up poor and vacations were few and far between. We have decided it is important to us to at least do one week per year. We haven’t flown since we’ve had kids. It seems like a waste of money when there are so many places to explore within 12 hours drive that we’ve never been to. So since we started vacationing with kids we’ve gone to Chicago, Ithaca, NY, Traverse City, MI, and Whitehall, MI. Chicago was awful with little kids and everything there is a pain in the butt and expensive. Since then we’ve settled on renting a house for a week in an area with lots of outdoor things to do. In Ithaca we rented a yurt and it was AMAZING. We try to spend between $800 and $1200 for the rental house. Once we’re there we’ll do one expensive day at a water park or amusement park. We also buy a state park pass for whatever state we’re in and visit as many as we can. In NY we went to Niagara Falls for one day. In Michigan, we went to Sleeping Bear Dunes and the Meijer Gardens on different trips. This year we are going to the Great Smokey Mountains and I can’t believe how cheap the houses are to rent with so many amenities compared to Michigan. My friend who goes to the GSM all the time told us to stay in either Townsend or Cherokee areas and I’m really looking forward to it. I’m feeling squirrelly about how many places I haven’t been to yet. Nashville, Memphis, Minnesota!
I second the Yurt love! We rented one in Colorado right outside Rocky Mountain National Park and it was $65/night. Two years later, my kids talk about that yurt ALL THE TIME.
More YURT love here! Last summer I flew up to DC where my daughter & 2 granddaughters live. We drove up to the mountains in upper Maryland and stayed in a yurt. We all loved it and can’t wait to do it again. And yes, they talk about it all the time!
The smokies are AWESOME! I stayed by Nantahala village (I was there for a wedding) – it might have been Bryson City? Love. Nantahala has a lot of water activities. Did I say love? And there’s the blue ridge parkway. Nantahala village has horseback riding and there’s a railroad around there too. I stayed in a cabin at the TOP of a wee little road on a giant hill. That was nerve wracking – but, ya know, fun and the view from the top was amazing. Have a great time! I need to go back.
I am a person who has an insatiable wanderlust, combined with a….challenging economic situation and a new job with very few vacation days. It causes me lots of angst. Most of the vacations we have done have been camping/National Park/road trips. I love them. We usually spend around $2,500 for 10 days for a family of 5, including gas, food, activities, lodging. We usually camp for a few nights and then get a cabin for a few nights, then camp for a few nights.
I have fond memories of childhood of sitting around the campfire, waking up to the smell of bacon and coffee, remember that time a raccoon got our food, etc., and I want my kids to have that, too. Plus, I am a cheapskate, and once you own the camping supplies, the cost of a quick trip or a long one is really only gas + $30/night. But it is a lot of work. It’s not a relaxing vacation at all, although I can’t think of a situation where I go on vacation with my children and find it relaxing. But it is better than nothing.
My husband does not particularly like camping, and he has back trouble, so it has become difficult for him to do. But if we don’t camp, we can’t really afford to stay for long at a hotel. So I get very frustrated about the cost and spiral into some sort of crisis where I wonder why we’ve structured our life the way that we have.
Yes, camping is definitely a LOT of work! Little kids love it, teens not so much.
Says who? I loved camping as a teen, and would go on 8 day backcountry backpacking trips with other teens. All my siblings love camping, and we know other families who love it too.
Unrelatedly, I grew up in Montana. ;)
I think the word “vacation” can trip people up depending on their previous experience with them. I grew up going to the USVI with my parents & sister for spring break every year from the time I was 7 until I graduated high school, and 3 times after. That was what I thought they were for everyone until I got married to a man for whom vacations had been road trips to stay in his grandma’s FL condo for a week, and ALWAYS involved other extended family members.
My parents’ income was about where ours is now, and for the first time in our 14 years of marriage we have a weeklong trip back to the USVI lined up for our own family of 4; my mom verified the expense (just under $10,000!!), which we are only justifying because I received an inheritance that covers it and my husband has 3 years’ worth of earned leave built up (he’s in the Army). How my parents afforded that EVERY YEAR is beyond me; our own “vacations” have involved 3+ days-long road trips from where we’ve been stationed in the Rockies and the Midwest to see our families on the east coast each year. I like seeing our families, but given my background that is NOT a vacation. These annual treks cost around $3000-4000 annually, and we budget for it and justify it because our kids otherwise wouldn’t see their grandparents and cousins.
I fall into the experiences > stuff camp, but I also fall into the savings (retirement/college/emergency funds) > experiences, and I run our family’s budget so I haven’t pushed the issue. We’ve also had the benefit of living overseas twice, and I got my vacation bucket filled through 4-day weekend trips here and there as we had time and money (most of these excursions were $500-$1000 for 2-4 people).
At any rate, I am a firm believer in the importance of family units (parents & kids) getting away as a unit to experience something new together; I feel it bonds the members together in a way you just can’t get through everyday interactions at home. But due to our life being what it is, we have had to squeeze our own adventures into those road trips to visit family and as a part of our moves from one duty station to the next. I have sinking savings accounts that I funnel money into every paycheck for everything from car expenses to home expenses to gift giving occasions and clothes purchases throughout the year. Money for annual trips is another that I plan for; for us the problem is a lack of time in which to take week-long trips. I suspect if we lived near both sets of our families and saw them regularly, I would budget a larger portion of money ($5000 annually or $10,000 bi-annually) to do bigger VACATIONS as a family of 4.
Someone else mentioned it below, and reminded me that I COMPLETELY forgot to add that I do Cape Cod as well; my parents live about 3.5 hours away and my grandma recently deeded her timeshare there to me, so for the past few summers I have taken my kids there for a week. For me this gets murky in terms of a vacation because:
1- I was given the timeshare and now only pay $600 per week for maintenance fees (I have 2 weeks, non-concurrent, and can rent them out if I can’t use them; this is not a typical fee for a weeklong stay at a beachfront hotel with a heated indoor pool).
2- My husband has the vacation leave earned but not the ABILITY to leave work for more than 10 days at a time to join us, so it’s just been me & the kids on those trips. And it is certainly a VACATION by my standards, but we’ve been missing 1/4 of our family, so I forget to count it. But this one-week trip for 3 people works out to around $1000 when all is said and done, which is not typical for a vacation in that location.
I also factor these Cape Cod trips into our annual Trip Back Home To Visit Family budget because I typically drive 3 days to my parents’ house where we stay a week, leave to go to the Cape for a week, then head back to their house for a few days to a week when my husband flies in to join us for a day or 2, then we all take a 12-hour drive down the coast to stay with his family for a week before driving back home (3 days). It’s exhausting, and the past few summers the kids & I have been away from home for a month or longer, and we’re sick of the car by the time we get back. That entire event is NOT a vacation by any means; it’s a trip with some fun sprinkled in here and there.
I’m a WAHM, though more accurately I’m a Work Online Mom, so while my work flow slows down considerably during these trips, I’m still able to pull out my laptop and get stuff done while I’m gone. And my husband is in the Army, so he travels A LOT and I’m used to being on my own both at home and on the go with the kids; being gone for a month and driving for 3 days by myself with 2 school-aged kids & a dog isn’t daunting to me… anymore. I don’t feel that is a typical attitude, and I’ve had many friends, family members and total strangers make comments about traveling without him; it’s just what has to happen sometimes, even though none of us like it.
We are trying to see all 50 states before the kids graduate from high school. I only have two kids, so maybe I wouldn’t be doing this if I had more mouths to feed/transport/listen to in the car in order to achieve this goal. I don’t really have a set dollar amount in mind as to what’s fair to spend on a vacation, though I find it does help when I break down a big number into a per-person number, so that might be helpful to you. We don’t camp all that much (god, so much work). The thing we do most often is try and rent a place — if it’s an expensive place, we’ll go for just 2-3 days. But a condo/cabin is usually the best because we can cook our own food. And we’ll usually drive to get there – plane tickets are just too much. But you didn’t ask how to do a vacation – you asked about cost. Okay, so we are going to the Gulf Coast (from Indiana) for spring break. We are staying at a cabin in Gulf Shores State Park, Alabama for about $600 for 4 nights. We are driving, but we’re taking some time to get there. We could do it in one 13-hour drive, but since we also want to cross off Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana on the way down, we’re spreading that part over 3 days (two hotels for $300 total). We’re bringing dry goods from home for dinner, and we’ll hit a grocery for cold stuff while there: I’d say it’ll be $100 in food at the store. Plus eating dinner out on the way (we’re packing lunches and the hotels have breakfast): $80. Oh, and gas: maybe $120. Our rule is, we have to “do something” in each state for it to count and usually I can find free (or close to it) things to do, so I’m not counting that cost (hiking, for example). So, total time gone: 7 nights. Total cost: about $1200, give or take, or $300/person for a week. That’s more than I like to spend, but we are also crossing 4 states off the list!
I just realized I forgot a few things, so that number is low. Our activity in Tennessee is eating lunch at a BBQ place in Memphis, so that will be $50 or so. In New Orleans we are taking a tour of the French Quarter for $25 each. Plus, dinner on the way back home, maybe $40. So it’s going to be about $350 a person, and that’s probably still a little low because there are always small things that add up. Maybe $400 each.
We are also going to Yellowstone this summer. I thought I was being very smart in buying one-way plane tickets ($312 each – like previous commenters, $300 or so is about my max on plane tickets unless it’s somewhere really good like going out of the country) and then renting a car to drive back. We’ll be seeing Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho while we’re there, and the Dakotas on the way back. But I was dismayed to learn the other day that car rental places charge you way more to drop off at a different location. Like, I’m seeing $500-700 for the car rental for a week. I was seriously bummed to be adding that to the total cost. So this trip is going to be $1200 for plane tickets, $945 for the cabin, $600 for the car, $250 in gas, $500 in food, and maybe $200-$300 in incidentals like getting into Yellowstone and Mt. Rushmore. That’s $2600 for about a week for the four of us. Oof. Wait, $725 per person for a week’s vacation. There, that’s a little better.
What makes that slightly more tolerable is that we paid for the plane tickets in November, and half of the cabin before that. So we’re spreading out the cost a bit – I might try and pay for the rest of the cabin this spring to spread it out even more, now that I see how expensive this one is.
We like to camp too, but on long weekends, not for a whole week. We usually do a long weekend as soon as school is out for the summer and then Halloween. Did you know that campgrounds are huge parties the weekend before Halloween? Kids ToT from tent to tent and people go all out decorating their campsites. It’s super fun. We usually go somewhere in Southern IL for that. Lake Carlyle, Giant City, etc.
This is one of the reasons why I love your blog. Love.
I’m not going to be real useful to you, but I’m going to share anyway.
I’m 35, single, and childless. One of the ways I treat myself to avoid being depressed by the single and childless is vacations. I don’t worry too much about spending money on these trips, but can’t go crazy. I’ve taken 4 European trips over the last 8 years and probably spend about $3000 for a two week trip. For a trip within the US, probably around $1000 or so. These are trips with friends, so things like hotels are shared expense.
I grew up in a family that took vacations almost every year until I was 12. There were 3 kids and almost all of them we drove from Iowa to places like Washington DC, Florida, South Dakota, Colorado, etc. My parents farmed so they could take time off in the summer. When I was 12 my parents had surprise twins (so much a surprise that a year before my parents—who bought their own health insurance—had dropped their maternity rider. Which meant an entire high risk pregnancy was paid for out of pocket) and the vacations stopped for many years. Trips with 5 kids were a lot more expensive. When the twins were 8, we took our first big vacation again as a family to Florida. We flew and my parents went pretty cheap on that trip. For example, we stayed at a Holiday Inn rather than on site like pretty much everyone recommends.
In the last few years my parents have found themselves almost empty-nesters (the last 2 are seniors in college) with kids that range in age from 35-23 and suddenly with more money than I’ve ever seen them with (by the way, it is gratifying to see your parents who struggled and worked extremely hard for 30 years be able to afford what they want). No grandkids yet for them and only 1 kid is married. For the past 4 Christmases, they have treated us to trips. We’ve gone to New York and Memphis (both because of college football bowl games). We spent last Christmas in New Orleans, and this year we went to Vegas. My mom got sick of trying to buy us Christmas presents and she loves the idea of vacations as experiences. These trips were not cheap, but in all honesty my parents are at the age where they want convenience. For example, we stay in really nice hotels in the exact location that they want. Much nicer than I would. I’m guessing that these trips are probably in the $8,000-$10,000 range when all is said and done. The adult kids try and pay for what my parents will let us….which is usually some of the tickets to things, some meals, and whatever else we can talk them into (parts of hotel rooms, baggage fees for all 6 or 7 people, etc). By the way, we loved New Orleans enough that I would not be sad if that was our family’s permanent Christmas location. It was fantastic. In a little more than 24 hours on Christmas Day, we went to midnight mass at St. Louis Cathedral, did a ghost walking tour in the Garden District, saw John Goodman walking his dogs, had a hurricane with dinner at Pat O’briens, and saw Irvin Mayfield perform at his jazz club. So, so, great.
So long story short, I think traveling with 5 kids on vacation is inherently expensive. Especially if you fly. Driving can help a lot on those costs. Condos with kitchens help (although my mom was never big on having to cook on her vacation). Did you factor in the costs that you wouldn’t be having at home for the time you were gone? I don’t think you’d regret going on a vacation like the one you are talking about. But I also don’t think it is so important that you should feel like your kids would be missing out if they don’t go.
Growing up: a few big trips (two Disney trips, one to Seattle, long weekends in Chicago or Philly) and regular summer trips to an Indiana Lake where our family of 5 squished into a 1 bedroom rental apartment owned by a distant family member (my brother slept on a folding beach chair). The entire extended family came that week and it was great. My grandpa’s friend lived at the lake and had a boat – it was a grand adventure every summer.
Now: About 9 years ago we bought a Marriott timeshare in Hilton Head. Around my junior year in high school my parents bought a timeshare there and I went with them a few times in college and then after graduation Mark and I went. We love it there and it’s at the edge of drive ability for us (about 13 hours) so we bit the bullet and bought into it right after our oldest was born. The timeshare is paid off and we pay about $800/year for maintenance fees. We have a beachfront 2-bedroom condo but can trade it for any other Marriott resort for $170. We’ve only done that once so far but it’s an option. If we rented one of these through Marriott for the week we usually go it would cost $300-500/night. Because it’s Marriott we have a Marriott credit card and we get points for our stays. We usually earn enough points for 2-3 free hotel stays each year which we use for weekend trips. My parents now live just outside Hilton Head so the trips double as vacation and family visit. And, since the kids are still young (8 and 5) having babysitting (grandparents) is KEY to it being an actual vacation. Cost for gas/food is usually around $500 (plus that annual maintenance fee)
We are currently saving up for a Disney trip in early 2016. This is a 2 year savings plan because god damn Disney is expensive. I really wanted to stay on-site and do the whole Disney THING but by trading our timeshare for a Marriott condo in Orlando we’re saving about $1200 (plus – full 2-bedroom condo with kitchen vs hotel room). When we priced out a trip with: 7 day Disney hotel, 5 day Disney tickets, 1 day at Universal for Harry Potter, airfare and food it was nearly $8000 for 4 people. We could easily all fly to an all-inclusive resort in Costa Rica for about $5000 so this is killing me.
Our plan going forward is that we will do a big trip ever 3 years or so. Like, I really want to spend 10 days in Boston/Martha’s Vineyard, take the kids to Vancouver and where we got married, visit Poland, and have trips to Mexico. And we’ll continue to drive to Hilton Head at least once a year.
Our girls are only 4 months, so we haven’t done a family vacation with kids yet, and our last few vacations were as a dual-income childless couple, so we went pretty elaborate, especially last time when I was pregnant and knew we wouldn’t be able to again for a while:
Summer 2014: Isla Mujeres, Mexico, $1k flight, $2k week in a ridiculous room with room service included and our own little rooftop pool, and view of the Carribean.
Spring 2013: New Orleans for a week with friends, volunteered at Habitat for Humanity 2-3 days, went to JazzFest one day, which, while fun, was way too crowded and I would prob not do again. Drove, around $1.5k, half of lodging and half on eating and drinking!
Spring 2012: Two weeks in Spain! With friends, some hostels to try to keep it reasonable, probably somewhere around $3.5-4k.
Fall 2011: Honeymoon in Maine. A week, splurged on a really nice room with a fireplace for the latter half, ate lots of lobster. Maybe $800 flight, $1.5k lodging, couple hundred on rental car, a few hundred on lots of lobsters.
Summer 2007: first big vacation, we were long distance and I was supposed to spend the summer where he was living, but I got a great job in NYC that summer instead. So we used about a third of the money I made that summer to go to Tulum, Mexico and stay in a $300/night rustic place right on the beach cliffs, with a cool pool and a guy to bring us drinks and food. I actually got a little morose at one point on the trip, having never spent so much before and wondering whether it was worth it. But just looking back on a picture of reading with a big floppy hat, in a cool pool, looking out over the ocean, just that bit has been surprisingly pleasant. It was a pretty lovely place.
SO MUCH LOVE for these comments.
I allocate my entire year-end bonus and tax refund to vacation, which usually works out to around 10% of my annual gross income. I also make at least one, and usually two, cross country trips per year to visit family. I do not consider this vacation, but rather a tax on my decision to live across the country.
Since I share custody of a single child, a vacation budget of say $10,000 goes pretty far. I think a freakout over airline ticket costs for a family of seven is ENTIRELY appropriate.
Bless my family, man. Growing up my brother and I got to take long vacations all over the country and it wasn’t until I was about fifteen that I put all the pieces together: an aunt that moved around every few years for her job and A SINGLE MOM THAT DIDN’T GO. She saved up to fly us “Unaccompanied Minor” status to wherever my aunt was living at the time. It wasn’t until I became a mother that I realized what a luxury a month off from two kids would be.
Now it’s just my daughter and I that I plan vacations for, and usually we go with one of my friends or group of friends with kids just to save costs. I budge $100 for each of us, per day, all in. That’s gotta cover either our room, or our share of a house, and food and activities. I work a FT office job and a PT minimum wage job. This year the car needed $1500 worth of work, so we don’t go. I am still very bitter about this.
I grew up going on an annual summer vacation so I really look forward to taking one each year, but I also get hives thinking about how expensive it can get. We usually spend about $2500-$3000 for a weekend and half trip. There are 5 of us. We go to the beach (in the past the Gulf) and mix in a few days at an interesting city along the way. Last year, 3 days in New Orleans then week on the beach. This year Georgia coast with trips to charleston and savannah. We drive. We get a condo with a kitchen and cook 90% of our meals. As the kids get older there are some places I want to take them where this model won’t be practical so I’ll have to readjust the budget. Gulp.
That should actually say, “a week and a half”. Oops
I tend to do the variety of vacation where there is a reason it is much less expensive. Example: we live very close to Disney, so getting there is not really a cost at all, half a tank of gas or so. And we can bring the house in the car if we need to. Or in high school a HS group (the band) went oversees a couple of times, and stayed with host families and there were fundraisers and such, and while I do t know the cost I know it was reduced and my mom usually went as a chaperone.
And we just went on a vacation and it occurred to me that going on a vacation and still doing all the cooking and cleaning chores but in a strange place is not much of a vacation. Maybe once the kids are older it will be better.
I’m currently trying to plan a honeymoon. So two people, some nice details, a few adventures (like hiking trips / horseback riding), but nothing extravagant. Lodging above hostels, but not castles. Still, husband-to-be eats like Gaston, and we’d like to go to Ireland…so I’m praying we can make the trip on under $4k. Ack ack ack. It seems so WORTH IT, when I can stop panicking about how huge that seems, because so far honeymoon-planning is the main thing keeping us sane as we plan the wedding reception.
This is so interesting and I find myself having these same squirrelly thoughts. We do some small trips (1 or 2 nights out of town, maybe even 3) every now and then–if say twice a year. But big vacations to is are probably a once every 5 years thing . I am looking forward to taking our kids to disney once they are a little older…that will be a big trip by our standards. I am guessing we will spend somewhere between 5-10% of our annual income on that. We went to Europe a few years ago and did the same. But those are big items we save up for years in advance and plan for. We have some friends who go in multiple trips like that a year and I’m pretty sure we have more disposable income than they do–so I largely think this is just how people are raised and what they come to expect . I look at it like I’d rather make our trips a big event (plus do a few little things each year) and have great memories of the big events.
Growing up, we took lots of driving trips, CA, Washington D.C., King’s Island in Ohio, with 7 people. All of us would save our change, even the smallest kids-and it was a big deal for the family when my dad emptied the bank and we counted the money! We stayed in the cheapest hotels my Dad could find-except at King’s Island-we stayed at the resort and was that a splurge! We also would bunk with any friends or family along the travel route. This was back in the 1960’s and 70’s, and I still wonder how my mom and dad managed it-there would be 5 kids squished into the back seat of the car, we used to take turns sitting on the floor. My husband grew up on the East Coast, and all their trips were camping trips.
So with my own family of 3-we have gone on numerous WDW trips, Europe twice. Trips to Chicago and Georgia to see family. With only one child, we were definitely able to travel more on our modest income than if we had more kids. We love going to WDW, and since we live in an expensive place-the hotel and food prices there do not seem out of line at all, in fact it is cheaper to eat at a nice restaurant on property at WDW, than in my hometown. We have an Alaskan Airlines credit card and get a companion ticket every year, or use frequent flier miles for airfare. It is very, very hard for me to pay a full fare price! We try and go to Florida in January-where it used to be considered Value Season-so it was cheaper than other times of the year. As someone mentioned above-it is a destination where we all have a great time, and we have so many happy memories of our trips there. By the way, we rarely stand in line for anything for long-you can manage that fairly easily once you get the hang of things.
We enjoy it so much, we bought into the Disney Vacation Club-and it is nice knowing that my daughter will be able to take her own family years after we are gone. Also, we can use those points for hotels all over the country, and even in hotels in Europe.
Sorry, I don’t have a dollar breakdown-but I try and get deals on everything I can. Our daughter is in college right now, so we haven’t taken a trip together in almost 3 years-hopefully when she graduates.
OK, you are making me Feel Lots of Feelings about vacations. I will try to stay on task about what you requested.
We are very fortunate to have a relative with a lake house who invites us to stay every summer. Sure, all 6 of us sleep in a room/porch area together while other extended family members sleep elsewhere, but it is totally worth it to us. Vacations are not where we’re choosing to heavily invest right now. We do spend money on the 12-hour drive, food, entertainment for the week but it is still doable for our budget, and (fortunately again) we all think it is cool to go to the same place every year and build layers of memories.
Two years ago we went to FL to visit family members. We had a free place to stay, we did not include a visit to Disney or another park, and the cost of the trip still stressed me out. There were costs that we had to pay, that are indeed just the cost of things times six people, that I was not prepared for. Like renting a van for a week. Paying extra for airplane seats that were grouped together. Paying extra for additional checked baggage such as inflatable toddler beds, etc. Totally necessary, totally understandable, we had a great time, and I still get stressed out every time we get asked when we’re going back.
So I guess my point is that I am always going to choose the cheapest enjoyable experience when considering our current budget and family size. Also, what Tessie said.
When I think of vacation costs, I think back to a three-week trip to Europe my husband and I took ten – OMG it was THAT long ago?! – years ago. We did it for $100 a day which was as cheaply as we could do without staying in hostels, which are not my thing. That $100 covered food and hotel, though – not airfare, and we took several between-country flights (on the equivalent of JetBlue when it used to be super cheap) plus of course the flights from/to the US. It was hugely expensive then, to two grad students. But it was DOABLE and something we will remember forEVER.
Why do I think about it? Because I would LOVE to return to Europe! But we could NEVER do it that cheaply again. Increased costs plus increased persnicketyness on my part. Plus a baby, now, who might not be okay with buying a baguette and some fancy salami at a German supermarket and calling that “dinner.”
We do two vacations a year, one week each, or approximately. Both to stay with family, so lodging and most food is generously covered. We do the airfare and that is about $700-$1000 depending on whose parents we are visiting. Add 33% to that next summer when our baby requires her own ticket.
That is about what we feel we can afford these days. But I long for a future when we can do a week at a ski resort, like I did each year as a kid. (Although my dad or sometimes both parents were able to pick the location based on professional continuing education courses, which meant that a portion of the hotel and food costs were covered by a stipend.) Despite WANTING to do the ski resort thing I get pre-stressed just THINKING about it. Hotel or condo has to be $300-$500 per night… And if we did a hotel we would have to rat all meals out. (A condo would have a kitchen but it more costly.) Then expensive dinners. Because we would WANT to eat at the fun restaurants. Plus renting a car and then skis and then there is the cost of lift tickets. That’s like $100 a day PER PERSON just for those things. (Those last three things – food is a separate cost.) and what if we wanted to indulge in a massage or spa treatment? I feel like we’re talking $5000-$7500 for a WEEK of skiing. On top of airfare. And I could be VASTLY underestimating!
Yet… I LOVED ski vacations as a kid! I want my kid to have that experience. And yes perhaps I could do it more cheaply – even a LOT more cheaply. But it wouldn’t be the same experience. Okay, maybe it could be Just As Good – I acknowledge that. But what if it wasn’t? Wouldn’t I then be mad at myself for not shelling out a few extra bucks to get the experience I want?
Or maybe I will just save all that money for college becuse it is just a DROP in the college bucket?!
Background info: My husband and I are in our 30s, no kids, and we both work full-time. Every year, his parents pay for his immediate family to spend a week at the beach, which they have done since the beginning of time. We have total opposite vacation styles: he is a beach-lounger/wave-rider, and I prefer to do a ton of research and exhaust myself doing/eating/seeing everything.
Early in our marriage, we depended heavily on the free beach vacation because we were not rolling in money, and I had super limited vacation time. Even though it was a FREE VACATION, it was hard for me because I don’t like the beach. (Typical exchange with his family – Them: “I can’t understand why you don’t like the beach!” Me: “I don’t like salt water or sand, that’s all.” Them: “Oh.” Me: “I do like to read, though…”) Add in years of family history, traditions, and lingo, and I had a rough go of it. I know that it sounds ungrateful of me, but there it is. Anyway, as far as costs go, that vacation cost us nothing (later, we had dog boarding costs), but I still count it as not a great situation. My husband was always concerned for me and not having as much fun as he would like, and I expended a ton of energy trying to keep a happy face on for everyone. If it wouldn’t have caused a LOT of drama, I would have stayed home in a heartbeat.
In a few years, the finances/vacation time sort of leveled out for us, and we decided to do a vacation in “my” style every other year. Because, yeah, it is insanely expensive to visit a place and see it the way I want to. The first time, we went to Denver, which is a fairly low-cost city. I also picked it because I knew it was fairly casual, not super metropolitan: a good gateway city for my husband. We were able to stay with friends, and although we did rent a car, I felt like the variety of things we were able to see and do made the cost worth it. We visited breweries, toured the Olympic Training Center, ate at lots of great restaurants. But because we stayed with friends, there was no lodging cost, and they hosted us for maybe 1/3 of our meals.
For our 5th anniversary, we took a 10-day cruise to the Caribbean, which ended up being about $1,000/person for the whole deal, or $100/person/day, and that included food, lodging, and evening entertainment. Like if we didn’t leave the ship for excursions; drive to the port and pay to park; or drink alcohol (all of which we did), that’s what the baseline cost would have been. In my mind, that is INSANELY cheap. That cruise was a really good way for us to have a relatively fixed-cost vacation. In the intervening years, I’ve cooled on cruises and resorts, but I think you can get a lot of bang for your buck that way. It tends to be pre-packaged, and you might be surrounded by mobs of humanity, but it will be CHEAP if you mentally itemize and don’t go crazy at the spa/casino/bar.
I think that’s the toughest part about visiting/touring vacations like the one you’re describing: a high degree of variable cost. It’s hard to predict how much catching a cab to dinner will be, and don’t hotel taxes always surprise you in the end? And if you are flying and renting a car, you have dropped SO much money before you have even DONE anything. So, that’s not motivating; I totally get that. Even though we have more disposable income to play around with now, I still get that vacation-planning-panic when the flight-hotel-transport-food-entertainment costs start adding up in my spreadsheet. An ancillary part of that panic is that whenever we travel to a city to do a vacation in my style, I’m always in the position of winning over my husband. He’s generally game to do things, but if stuff doesn’t go as planned, it can sort of be a downer for the whole day. So planning a vacation has added pressure of justifying the cost with a corresponding level of fun/novelty, along with that intangible quality of “worth it”-ness. To me, seeing and doing new things is worth some degree of cost, but the reality is that my perfect day involves staying at home and reading. So. It can be hard to preemptively justify the expense of a vacation, especially when I feel the need to balance so many other elements simultaneously.
So, the current state of things is that we still go on city vacations every other year and save for them in the beach-only years. During the beach-only years, we stay with the family for the whole week; during the city vacation years, we stay for about 4 days. This year is our 10-year anniversary, and we are definitely going to go SOMEWHERE. But where? We are torn between San Francisco/Napa and Chicago, and both destinations will cost a pretty penny. But … it’s our anniversary, so we’ll be celebrating our marriage, or whatever? It is difficult for me to align the cold, monetary, economic value of a vacation with the soft, emotional, sentimental value of the experience. Because even though the experience can be (and often is!) super valuable to the family/relationships/memories/etc, you have to pay for it even if it isn’t. And I’m hard pressed to say that the cost of a vacation is worth it if I spend the entire time wishing that I were reading at home instead.
So many great comments already, what a terrific read! This is exactly the type of discussion I enjoy, so thank you for that.
We spend anywhere from $4,000 to $10,000 on vacations a year for 4 (now 5 with our new baby). Yes, it is a boatload of money. Travel is a priority for us, so we save and forgo some things (cable or satellite tv, for example) in order to make it happen.
We live in Canada. It’s so cold for so long out of the year, getting some sun & warmth at some point during the winter is very motivating to save for such an expense. We have travelled all over. Every Canadian province, nearly half of the US states. Europe, a cruise of the Med and down to Africa. All of it with the kids. They are travelling SO MUCH more than I did as a child, and lots more than many of their classmates. I sometimes feel this may spoil them for the future. Getting on a plane is nothing to these kids, and I’m not sure that they grasp the cost.
All that said, we only had a chance to travel to many of these places because we’ve also lived near or in them. As a military family, we move a lot. So the cruise in the Mediterranean, while expensive, was no where NEAR what it would have been if we had been living in Western Canada and travelling from there. We were already living in England, and it seemed silly not to take advantage of that.
When we lived in Western Canada (just moved to Central Can, so now I’m not sure where we’ll travel to), we travelled to Hawaii. Again, it’s closer and therefore less expensive (less travel time too!) than when we lived on the East Coast.
Hawaii is our most expensive holiday we ever do. Airfare is nearly $1000 per person, round trip. Sometimes we find deals, but it’s still close to that. We usually go for 2.5 to 3 weeks. We rent houses through the VRBO for around $150/night. Rent a car for the entire time ($$) We cook all our own meals and do free activities like snorkelling, boogie boarding, hiking, reading on the beach, visiting coffee farms or any other attraction that’s free or close to it. We are also happy to just sit on the lani and listen to nature and enjoy the fact that it’s hot & humid. This is by far my favourite place to holiday. We save for a year in order to afford to go. It is entirely worth it to us, even the 36 hour travel day that’s involved each way. It’s brutal, both the financial cost and the travel time involved, but worth it.
My take on this is probably a little different as I’m British and have only ever lived in Europe… My early childhood holidays (see: poverty-stricken 1970s Britain) were exclusively spent staying with my aunt in the north of Scotland. Every Christmas and Easter were spent at my grandmother’s house in the north of England. In the 1980s, my Scottish aunt was dead and there was (a little) more money about, so we started going to Cornwall (extreme south-west of England) every summer, always self-catering. From about the age of 14, my parents started taking me to northern Spain (more self-catering). As a student, I went on two very cheap package holidays with friends (Portugal once, Inter-Railing once).
After graduating in 1992, I moved to France and took no holidays at all for several years except maybe 3 days staying with a friend in Zürich one December.
When my then-partner and I were first together, we once went to northern Spain, off-season, self-catering, very, very cheap. We also went to Bulgaria twice, for two weeks each time, staying either with friends or in boarding houses booked by Bulgarians (so absolutely dirt cheap). More very cheap holidays – essentially only the flights. Once, when my partner was working temporarily in upstate NY, I flew to NY for a week, staying in a bed&breakfast organised by a friend of mine living nearby (but in an apartment too small to welcome me). The flights were expensive, but I spent little once there as my friend provided dinner. I look back on that week with much, much fondness!
Once the girls came along (2001 and 2004), we started doing “holidays” – one or two weeks self-catering. We always drove (Europe is small!) and never took more than 8 hours. We went to the French Alps, the French Pyrenees, Lake Como in Italy (absolutely magical) and the French Basque country.
Since 2010, it’s just been me and the girls (they may or may not do something with their father, but that’s no longer my concern). We mainly travel by train (I don’t drive or own a car) and spend a week in a nice hotel with a pool, in a major European city. I refuse to do self-catering – for me, it’s absolutely not a holiday. We’ve been to Bilbao, Genoa, Milan, Barcelona and Lisbon (we flew to Lisbon, but very cheaply). This summer, we’ll most likely go to Madrid. Train tickets for the 3 of us (considered as 2 adults and one child, who has a travel card giving us reductions) cost around $300 maximum, and the hotel is around $65 a night (there, we’re considered as one adult and two children – at Novotel, children under 16 go free (including the buffet breakfast) if they share the same room as the adult or adults). I reckon we probably spend less than $1500 for the entire week. That seems a lot to me, but as my living situation is far from optimal (my daughters live with their father so I see them rarely, the elder one is increasingly hostile), I treasure this week we spend together.
I’m guessing this hasn’t been very useful for you, but I hope you’ve found it interesting at least!
We try to go on vacation every year, and the last few years we’ve split a beach house with some good friends who also have several children. We live within 6 hours of the beach so we drive not fly. Airfare for 6 puts a vacation much more firmly out of our grasp. When we stay for a week and split a house we only go out to eat 2-3 times because we have a kitchen and take turns cooking and also taking date nights. For about a week at the beach it usually ends up costing around $1500-2000 depending on where we go and what time of year. That includes gas, eating out, any activities we want to do, and of course the house.
Our other “vacations” are usually to family and though we spend several hundred on gas and some activities/food, we stay with family so it is usually less than a thousand for a week or more.
We did go to Disney a couple years ago but got discounted tickets AND drove AND got a special rental rate/place, and that vacation still cost us about $3500-4000. It was not cheap.
We really like to take vacations so to make it happen we usually only go places we can drive, and we try not to eat out very much. That helps us save some money.
Ooooh, fun, I love these kinds of topics! I think I am similar to you, because I am constantly being surprised by how expensive normal life things are. We have young children and until now have pretty much spent all our vacation time/money on going home to visit and stay with family. I recently priced out a Disney World vacation for our family of five through Costco and it came out to about $3200, which included four plane tickets across country, hotel, and park tickets. While that number wasn’t as staggering as I was expecting it is definitely not something I could see us doing more than once every five or so years.
Ugh. I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently.
I grew up as a missionary kid, so I DID travel young. Once we came back to the U.S., though, we didn’t do a lot of fancy vacations. Most of them were to the upper pennisula of Michigan – cabin on a lake, fishing, boating, etc. My dad was a doctor and would choose conferences in interesting places, so we would tag along. That’s how I saw San Francisco and Washington D.C and Disney. It was all done as cheaply as possible, though.
While our kids were babies, I worked every single weekend and my husband worked during the week and that puts the kabash on a lot of vacation plans. Our oldest kids are 10 and he and I have taken three adult only vacations in that time. We went on a 5 day cruise to the Caribbean (SO WORTH IT) and two four-day trips to Las Vegas and Boston. He is making noises about a long weekend trip to NYC later this year. We look for deals on flights and scour the internet for hotel deals and take public transportation in places like Boston. We try to get a big meal at lunch instead of dinner and I always have breakfast food in our room or we stay at a hotel with a free breakfast. In Boston, we stayed at a slightly fancier hotel ($200ish per night) but they had free breakfast AND free happy hour with heavy hors d’oeuvres each night so that made our food budget smaller.
Our family vacations, though, are limited by exactly what you talked about. My siblings and I rent a big house on a lake somewhere close each summer. The house is paid for using the dividends of my mom’s life insurance policy. When she died, my brother did some investing. The house for all 15 of us costs about $3000 for the week. We all contribute food and take turns cooking. We’d buy food anyway at home, so I consider that a wash. Aside from the gas to travel , all we pay for is our day trips – charter fishing on the big lake, a trip to an amusement park, etc.
We are currently planning (SAVING FOR) a vacation to Europe in summer 2016. We have family in Germany and will use their knowledge to minimize the crazy expense. It will cost us an arm and a leg to get there – we are budgeting $10K for a family of 5 (hoping our credit card FF miles will cut this down) on just airfare. We’re going to stay 3 weeks and take 2 long weekend trips to 2 big cities – Paris and Undecided. Travel around Europe is pretty doable, especially since we have the inside scoop with our family. We’ll spend the rest of the time living with our relatives and taking day or overnight trips. We’ve waited until our kids were old enough to make this worth our while because I expect the whole trip to come in at AT LEAST $15K.
This trip is a HUGE THING and is causing me a lot of stress. I priced out Disney last year because my husband had a conference down there and I thought I could piggyback us on and after running a few numbers was breathing into a paper bag.
But yes, I have the same thoughts that you do about college funds and retirement funds and a new roof and children whose feet are growing at a ridiculous rate and WHERE IS MY PAPER BAG?!??
We just took the kids and my parents to Disneyland. For 3 days in the parks, 5 days in a hotel, and hotel to park transportation it was $3800. 4 adults, 3 kids, but in DIsney, “Adult” tickets start at 9 or 10 years old. No flight cost, because we drove there. I told the kids it was the one and only time we’d be going, and that’s why we waited until the youngest was 8. We’ll probably do Universal, Knotts Berry Farm and some other theme parks over the next couple of years.
In a regular year, we take the kids on 2-3 long weekends away. Places we can drive to like San Diego, Tucson or Los Angeles.
The kids go away every summer for 6 weeks. My parents are young retirees. The kids therefore spend a week in New Hampshire (in the same house we rented every year when I was growing up) at the lake, and then another few trips to places like Washington DC, Maryland, Virginia and other places on the east coast where we have family. In between, they’re on the beach in my hometown. It’s a tough life they have. My parents pay for everything. I’m spoiled by this, and it lets my kids see things that I don’t have the time or resources to take them to on my own.
Our next big “family trip” will probably be a week long cruise. The kids have been asking about Alaska, and it seems like it would be a good way to see parts of Alaska. That will happen in 3-5 years. Unless my parents decide they want to take us on a cruise.
We are a family of six and I just – I can’t spend as much money as it all costs. I have planned for YEARS to go to the Jersey Shore (I am from NJ) and rent a house and – well, we would drive there and then stay in a rental and it would cost whatever it costs to stay (2000, maybe) and then to drive there, I don’t know, $500? Then beach tags and groceries and eating out maybe another $1000? I can’t afford it and that’s a pretty cheap vacation! I am taking my 7 5 and 3 year old girls to see my parents in their retirement town in FL in two weeks and I was going to drive but my parents freaked out about me going on my own (my husband was going to stay home with my son ,who we felt would really run amok through my parents’ house) so they offered to pay for our flight and I accepted. I’m taking the 7 and 5 year old to Disney for one day and that’s that. I’m dreading it, but what can you? I want to have Family Fun. :)
In general I feel the cheaper the better is the best option…that said though my father is dying and we are going a cruise to Bermuda as his kind of farewell voyage and it is going to cost a freakin FORTUNE. it will probably be like 7-9K when all is said and done. and while normally i would think that’s an appalling amount of money to spend on a vacation in this case I think it’s ok to just go all out. But for an annual thing…road trips rather than plane tickets, staying with friends, camping, or air b and b…
we have 3 kids – vacations just COST. There is no way around it-esp if you have more kids than that. That being said, our kids won’t WANT to be with us soon (until they have jobs and realize what a value vacationing w/mom and dad is – abt age 23) – so we are using money to spend time w/the kids NOW.
– we ski – a week in Colorado each year. UGH, yeah pricey -flights for 5, lessons for 3, lift tickets for FIVE, rentals for FIVE + condo. Not cheap. Having your daughter tell you she went up a level and your son WIN THE DOWNHILL RACE? TOTALLY WORTH IT.
– beach trip w/the kids – we drive so it’s not that pricey but beach house rentals are not cheap.
– PARENTS only trip – 5 days each year, plus 2 weekends other times – this is just NEEDED to help us stay connected .
My view is this —> kids don’t remember much – but work free time w/parents? this is their favorite weeks of the whole year. I can’t put a price on that. And I get to spend time with THEM also? Love it.
We didn’t have a lot growing up and the only trips I took as a kid were road trips across the country to see relatives. When I was in college I went to Europe a few times where I traveled cheap and stayed with family or in hostels. I’m now married with no kids but I really only travel for work or if I can take it as a write off in some way because I still don’t have a lot. I also wanted to plug Air bnb instead of hotels. You save so much money and get to stay in a normal neighborhood, go to the market, local bakeries etc… This is especially cool if you go to another country. Also, the people who own the place often have some great local suggestions of things you might not think to do. The only thing you don’t get is daily maid service, which I don’t really care about. The last Air bnb I stayed in had heated bathroom floors and a piano and it was like 65 a night!
i find that if we go with a set amount of cash and I establish to boundaries with Tim
Before we leave the money part seems to go much better. Are we going to say no all the time and only buy one souvineer (yearly trip to the lake cabin with little national park store full of junk)? Are the kids going to bring their own money to spend (don’t care at all what they buy with it as long as I don’t have to carry it)? Or our answer will be yes but only one item a day or within reason (disney world and we bought them whatever)?
We are recently a family of seven and we are going to Houston for a family reunion in June and then on to gavelston to the beach for a few days. We are driving. And we are renting a house so we can have a kitchen for the babies and save money by eating lunch and breakfast at home. But dinner can be out. I’m thinking $1,000 for the housing will be reasonable. And there won’t be a ton of stuff to buy. Sea shells can be picked up for free. We have promised my oldest a trip to go deep sea fishing so that will have some added cost. We have spent as much as $6,000 at Disney world with three children, one of them only 2 years old and as little as $500 for four nights at the national parks cabin. I don’t do tent camping but I don’t mind driving and we’ve driven to Michigan from Arkansas several years for a family trip to visit extended family and it’s been fine.
We didn’t do very many vacations when I was a kid, it was mainly church group trips over spring break.
I have NO IDEA how people really planned a long distance trip before the Internet. How did you know the weather? What hotel to call? Just tons of phone calls and logistics that we can now deal with without having to talk to anyone at all.
Word to this. The Internet is solid gold when it comes to travel planning. Before that…I can’t even imagine.
Said this exact same thing last week when I was planning our spring break trip. How did people DO it without the internet?
Yes to the Internet part! My mom had a friend who was a travel agent and I think she used her a lot when planning trips pre-Internet. She told us that when she was a kid and her family went on vacation, they would drive to wherever and then go from hotel to hotel seeing if they had rooms for them. I can’t imagine the level of freak out I would feel if I was driving 12 hours with no definite plans for a place to stay. Not surprisingly, she said some of the fights her parents had during this portion of the trip were EPIC.
Funny, we did this kind of thing when I was a kid – just hit the road a trust that there would be a hotel/motel room within budget at the end of the day. Some times we did’t know our destination, just a direction. And I LOVED it! Rarely backfired. It helped that we tended to avoid big cities for that kind of thing. And if we felt we had scored a good deal, we’d stick around an extra day or two and just sight-see, enjoy the pool, take short hikes … One time we were headed to Florida for a week but stopped in North Carolina because we were just having so much fun. I greatly appreciate the spontaneity my parents modelled.
We drove for all our vacations too, and had NO idea where we would end up spending the night. I remember some “terse” conversations between my parents when hotel after hotel would be booked up. We usually found an OK place, but wound up once in a place in New Mexico that was questionable at best. Still, it was always fun to see where we’d wind up. I always liked Holiday Inns – I was convinced they had the best pancakes in the entire world!
We took our first major vacation with kids last summer – Pennsylvania over the Fourth of July. The flight was by far the biggest cost, three seats plus one free lap child, $1200 total.
We stayed most of the trip with my sister in Harrisburg, and got in free to Hershey Park because she works for the resort. We also took a trip to Baltimore to see the National Aquarium, which probably cost around $100 to $150 per everyone but the baby, if you count food/snacks, entrance fees, gas, souvenirs, etc. We ended our visit in Philadelphia. I paid a higher price for a hotel room (around $350 for two nights, I think – usually we book places under $100 per night) that was literally right near Independence Square because it was important to me not to have to drive in the city on a major holiday and find parking, etc. We booked that at least four months in advance, otherwise I don’t think it would have been even that “cheap.” But we also ate out every meal while there, and that really pushed up the costs. We didn’t do enough research to find cheap places to eat, or maybe there just weren’t any in that area, but dinners were running $30 to $40 per person (if you take the average of two adult and one kid’s meal, plus soup or whatever for the baby). We went to a children’s museum and a few other history-type museums that cost between $10 and $25 per person. Grand total was somewhere around $4000 and when I added it all up I was pretty disappointed that we’d spent that much, especially given how much free lodging and free amusement park time we had. The little expenses, food, and entrance fees really added up.
Travel of any kind is pretty important to us – my husband has traveled to more than 30 countries (as an adult), and I had a great experience on a family road trip when I was 19 that makes me want my kids to see sights in as many US states as possible. My philosophy until now has been to set aside money every month for travel and then not worry about what we spend other than to look for the cheapest flights/a good deal on rooms. This, to me, goes a long way to making a vacation relaxing. If I worry about money every second, it becomes much less enjoyable. HOWEVER, I’m having quite a bit of sticker shock when I see what it costs us just to go somewhere for the weekend. Even two nights of camping requires a $100 investment in food, plus money for gas, stove fuel, and wood, and we usually discover we need some new piece of equipment right before we go (like a bigger tent – oops!). Add in the camp fees, which seem to be getting higher ($20 or $30 a night, sometimes), and we can easily spend $300, which is an entire month’s “travel budget.” I was just telling my husband tonight that we need to start paying more attention to expenses when we travel. I think there’s probably a balance to be struck between having a relaxing time without worry and not letting money trickle away needlessly. I just haven’t found it yet.
Oh yeah, I completely forgot we rented a car the entire 10 days we were there. So the break down was something like, $1200 for airfare, $600 for rental car, $350 for two nights’ lodging, $1850 for everything else. More than anything, it was the $1850 for everything else that really killed me. Yes, we paid for some meals and groceries so my sister’s family wouldn’t have to foot the entire bill, but ye gods that’s a lot of little cuts. I don’t even have a t-shirt to show for it.
I haven’t read the other comments yet, so please forgive me if I say exactly what others have said.
My family goes on a lot of vacations, but they are generally not what most other people would call a vacation. (We are not at work, so we call them vacations.) We spend the majority of them either visiting with my parents who live on a lake a 12 hour drive from our house. We drive there, so the expenses are minimal. We try to buy groceries for everyone while we’re there to offset the cost to my parents of having us there, but the cost of that type of vacation are minimal. We also go hiking/camping a lot. The hiking vacations are generally in Canadian National Parks where backcountry camping passes are ~$5/night/person. Or we camp in the drive-in campsites at a National or Provincial Park, where the campsite fees for a night are ~$25/night if everyone arrives in one vehicle (it’s another $13/night for an additional vehicle). Even if we then drive out from the campsite to go to something pricey like a water park or an adventure park, the total cost of the trip is very low.
Of course this means when we want to go on a vacation that does NOT involve hiking or camping for weeks, I freak out at the cost. We recently went to Disneyland for 4 days and I nearly hyperventilated at the cost of the passes for our 4-person family. I kept having to tell myself that we don’t do this very often, the kids will have a blast, etc. In order to fund these “other” types of vacations every few years or so, we pay for everything (and I mean everything) on our Visa card. We pay it off each month, but we collect points that can be used for plane tickets. This means that we haven’t paid for plane tickets for a family vacation in probably 8 or 9 years as we’ve always been able to fly on points. This helps reduce my level of freaking out. We don’t stay in 5-star hotels (at Disneyland we stayed at a Ramada across the street), we don’t eat out at fancy places. We could, I suppose, afford to do fancier, but my husband and I just don’t feel like it.
I guess I have only tangentially answered your question. I don’t know what I would deem reasonable for a week’s vacation. We were going to go visit friends in Tulsa over spring break this year, but we didn’t decide for sure until December. The flights alone would have been $1500 per person to get us there (there was no availability using points) and while we desperately wanted to see our friends, we just couldn’t cough up $6000 for plane tickets for a week’s vacation. So at least I know that $6000 is too much. I think if they’d been $500-600 per person, we might have gone. But we’ll never know now!
We do go on vacation, every year. We are very fortunate to be able to do so; I try never to forget that. We also try to get good deals on airfare, lodging, etc. We are willing to spend on good food (take out/restaurants/groceries) because food is important to us. We pretty much always vacation with the kids.
We do two basic types of vacations:
1. My husband grew up in Italy and he likes to go back & take the kids. We don’t go every year–every 2 or maybe 3. It is RIDICULOUSLY expensive to fly to Europe (and there are 5 of us). Like, $1500/ticket. But we usually have a free place to stay & free car once we get there bc of family. We spend on eating out, touring, attractions, etc. but that isn’t so different from traveling in the US; the big expense is getting there. So that is a thing we do every few years because it is important to our family; I also get that we are extremely privileged to even THINK about doing it.
2. On other years we go somewhere in the US for a week or so. We try to spend $300-$500pp airfare. We stay at AirBnB places which vary in price but are basically $200-$400/night. So that’s $1500-$2500 airfare, $1400-$2800 lodging for a family of 5 – $3K to $5K per week before you eat, etc. I think that’s a basic price range that will get you a lot of different places in the US.
If you’re going to camp, or stay purely with family, or drive somewhere in your own car, I think you could cut the cost quite a bit. But if you are going to fly & pay for a place to stay, I think $3K-$5K for a family is not out of the norm.
We have 4 small kids and I am kind of with you about vacation costs. For example, my husband wants to go to FL for his 20th high school reunion and he added up costs to fly the whole family there for the long weekend and do a day at Disney and it was going to be over $3k. That, to me, is no where near worth it for a long weekend that centers around an event in which I have no interest.
Really, for me, it’s the cost of airfare that I just cannot justify. We live in the DC area and have his family in FL and mine in MI and we visit each one about once/year but we drive. Sure, 4 small kids in a car for 12+ hours isn’t amazing but it does only cost about $200 in gas, so compare that to $2000 in airfare and for me driving is a no brainer. We have done Disney twice with our kids and FOR US it is totally worth the cost. We are military, so get insanely cheap Park tickets and either stay with family or get cheap resort rates, so we can probably do it for about half the cost of other families of 6. Plus our kids (and we) love it so it’s easy to justify.
Growing up my family drove from MI to FL every year to stay with my grandparents for spring break. In hindsight, that’s funny because we lived in a community where EVERYONE “went to Florida” but I think for like 80% of them that meant airfare + resort + adventures or whatever, and for us it meant crammed in the minivan and staying at my grandparents retirement community that had a pool. We still always thought it was a great vacation.
Anyway TL; DR our trips are pretty much exclusively centered around driving and staying with family. Even if that means not staying at family’s house, we tend to plan vacations so they double as a chance to visit our parents/siblings.
OMG, the Disney military park tickets are so awesome. That’s how we did it too, going with my parents because my Dad is retired military.
Wow, so many great comments! I’m with Jenn (way, way back near the start of the comments) – we try to alternate between big trip one year, small trip the next year. Big trip, for our family of five, is something in the $5000 range. Small trip is something in the $2000 range.
I had a big freak out about three years ago thinking about how many more summers we had left with the kids. I was working during the summer once I was 15 and then moved away when I was 18 and never lived at home again. Our oldest is turning 12 this month and so…that doesn’t leave a lot of time for Big Family Memories. So whereas we had been scared of travel (the logistics, the cost, the food, the planning), we decided we better do something about it while we still could.
So what I did then was make a big bucket list of everywhere we thought we might want to go. Everything from “weekend in Quebec City” (which is just a four hour drive away for us), to “week in New York City” to “Disney cruise” to “visit friends in California” to “week in Paris.” We asked the kids and added a few things they were interested in – a weekend at a local water park, for example. Then, I did some basic work pricing out each vacation – transportation, food, accomodations, tickets to things. It was actually kind of fun, if you’re into that sort of thing, and I made a few pinboards for dream vacations so I should show them to my husband.
Once we had a general budget in mind for each thing, we decided what we were going to be able to afford, and when. We chose two “big” vacations from the list – one is very big, including airfare – and three “small” vacations from the list, which are drivable for us and usually less than a week long. Then we scheduled them out by year, and started a savings plan.
So far we’ve done one of the big vacations (PEI) and one of the small (the water park the kids wanted). Both were absolutely worth it. When I’m charging a few thousand dollars of hotels and car rentals to the credit card it hurts, it REALLY hurts, but the times we all had were great. It was so worth it for me, as well as them, to get outside my comfort zone and see something new and have fun together.
Whenever we travel I always book places with a kitchen. Some people hate cooking while away but it’s not an option for us, because my kids have so many food allergies. The places we stay – usually cottage/condo rentals, or long-term hotels – are more expensive per night, but for five of us, the savings on food more than makes up for it. A lot of long-term hotels have free grocery delivery service so you can even have food waiting for you when you arrive.
We also have friends who dash off to the Caribbean every year and they make it seem so easy, but for us, because of the flights, that’s out of our price range. We always make sure we have enough saved up for each vacation before we actually book it, and with our “five year vacation plan” it helps us stay on track for saving.
Oh, I love everything about this plan. Everything. Writing it down.
Me too! I’m not quite at the stage of “how many family summers more?” but I’m worried that it will be a very small window between “the youngest is now old enough to appreciate/remember” and “the oldest is now too independent to appreciate” for all of us to be simultaneously getting a Big Bang for our buck. We’re thinking ages 5,7,9 for Disney vacation.
I’ve been wanting for a couple of years to fly across the country (ATL to Seattle) to visit my sister and her husband, with our kids (10 and 7). And every year I chicken out because the cost makes me too nervous. I know airfare would be at least $1600 (plus incidentals like airport parking and bags), and that we’d also need to rent a car (no idea how much that costs but reading your comments here makes me think around $500-600 for 4-5 days), and possibly get a hotel (I think $125/night is a reasonable cost, so, $625? but would try to find something for less). Then, tours and attractions, I guess we’d spend at least $80-100 maybe three times? Museums, Space Needle? I don’t know. So that’s around $4000 total I guess. I hardly ever factor in food, since we have to eat no matter where we are. We do have this much in savings and/or could pay it off without difficulty if we paid on a credit card, but it still stops me from buying the dang tickets.
I think you would find rental cars to be cheaper than that. Try expedia, hotwire, etc. Of course if you get the big fancier cars it will cost more, but if you can travel in a smaller car than you can do much better. Also depending on where your sister lives, Seattle has awesome public transportation (I’m from there). There are also attractions that cost very litte (i.e. a ferry ride, the zoo, etc). It’s a fun and beautiful place to visit the right time of the year. (After 4th of July through end of September are almost always gorgeous!)
I didn’t get a chance to read through all the comments, but I will because maybe there are some good ideas, but I’m so conflicted about vacations. My family went on one big family trip my entire 18 years at home. A road trip that hit Mt Rushmore, Yellowstone, Denver, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Disneyland, San Diego. Three weeks in our van. I was only 7 but I have the BEST memories of this. But we never did any again. Both my parents worked hard, but we never had the money, I don’t think. Or the vacation time! 20 days of PTO a year is kind of joke.
I have always wanted to go to Disneyworld. (I think my dad still feels bad we never got there.) So much so that when my son was born 5 years ago, I started saving $50/month. I figure $50/month for 8 years will get 4 of us to Disney without using credit?? But again, that’s saving for EIGHT YEARS for ONE TRIP. And we still might not make it debt free. How do people afford Disney more than once a lifetime? How do people afford regular family vacations? We all save differently and spend differently and have different priorities, I know, but it amazes me. I must be doing it wrong.
Plus, my kid comes home from preschool and tells me Ryyker went to Mexico and Aubrey went to Florida and Kellen went to California and “Mom, see that airplane, I think it’s Avery’s. She’s flying to Mickey’s house.”
Sigh.
Ooooo, yes I’m surprised no one has yet mentioned vacation TIME, which for me at this stage in life is almost more valuable than the vacation DOLLARS. I’m usually more limited by the vacation days I have available than by the funds available.
Agreed.
I don’t have that problem (excellent vacation policy at work), but we run into it with Husband’s work (horrible vacation policy at his work) and now with the kids’ school. I’m comfortable with them missing a day or so, but not a lot more than that. We know some families who pull their kids out for a week to go on a trip – neither of us would be comfortable with that, so we have to work around their holidays/summer vacation, which means we’re almost always planning a trip in some kind of “high season” (spring break, fall break, Thanksgiving, winter break, summer).
I want to plug one of my favorite things about living in Illinois. All but 2 of our state parks are free. Rustic cabins are $45 a night (sleep 6, heat, ceiling fans, couple chairs, electricity, picnic table and fire pit), and camping spots cost between $5 and $25 depending on whether you have tent or an RV. We can spend a long weekend in a state park for gas, cabin, firewood, and food $. A couple times we stayed in a rustic cabin on a lake at Panther Creek State Park and then did all the Abe Lincoln sites, which are mostly free. When we camped across the border in Indiana last summer, the tent spots were $50 a night plus you have to pay to enter the park. WUT
I have much more of a travel bug than my husband and I like planning trips more than him, so I’m the vacation planner. I try to plan things that take the preferences of all the family members into account. We mostly travel to visit family. While visiting them, we try to plan one or two family outings/fun stuff. We also try to take at least one long weekend trip that’s just our family and to someplace we want to go. Last year, we decided that we were too tired for this, and would rather stay home. Every 2-3 years we try and go on a bigger, farther away trip. This is expensive, but pays dividends when we’re still talking about it years later.
We generally have a price range in mind that we feel comfortable paying for a night in a hotel. If I can find things in that range, great! If I can’t, I spend a lot of time searching, my budget creeps up and I identify a couple of places that meet our needs at what seem like a reasonable price for the area/time of year. Then, I tell my husband, who thinks it’s really expensive since he hasn’t done hours of research and we discuss price/location/amenities etc. It helps that I have a higher tolerance for “budget” places and he has a preference for some amenities. It would be harder if it were the other way around.
On trips where we stay in several different places, accommodations are usually a combination of low-mid budget places and mid-range. As a family, we choose to spend more money on activities, and less money on food, eating a lot sandwiches. I prefer to do less cooking on vacation.
A weekend away is usually <$500 for my family of 3. Visiting family is mostly the plane tickets, which gets expensive, but I value visiting family and none of us want 1 or 2 days in a car each way. A BIG vacation has generally ranged from about $2000-$4000 for a 10-14 day trip. (Low range: shorter, driving only, no plane tickets, some destinations with low cost hotel rooms. Higher range: longer, with plane tickets, some destinations with more expensive hotels, more high cost activities.) We took one trip to an expensive international destination when there were just 2 of us where the total probably came to $6000-$7000. I never added everything up because the total would make me very uncomfortable. We could afford the trip overall, and each component seemed reasonable, but the big number was and is scary.
I'm starting to think about a Disney trip in few years and the prices make me gulp. We'll definitely do it once, but I already have guilt about a trip we haven't planned because my sister-in-law, with older kids, would like to take her family but they can't afford it (yet).
I love your comment threads, Swistle – this one was engrossing! I was one of five children and I never set foot on an airplane until I was 17 years old and on my own. That being said, we took a family vacation every summer – a road trip, always, with a camper for my parents and a tent for the children. When I think back on those vacations, I remember them very fondly, but I also think about how incredibly tiring and stressful they must have been for my mother, who had to plan 3 meals a day for 7 people. I think we stopped at a grocery store every day. My parents saved money every month in a designated vacation fund to allow us to take those kind of vacations. For our road trip to Alaska in the summer of 2002, I believe they spent over $1,000 on gas alone (a seven seater van pulling a 20 foot camper uses a huge amount of fuel!)
Now as an adult, with young children, I am more a fan of the vacation rental plan, where we can do day trips from a rented cabin/cottage/home (found on AirBnb or Homeaway) within driving distance. We tend to take these kind of vacations every year with my siblings, their spouses, nieces/nephews, and our parents. Usually my parents or my husband’s parents pay for the vacation rental, each individual family unit takes turns cooking (and paying for) a meal for the entire group. This cuts down on costs significantly but doing vacation with other family members does require additional negotiation and compromise in terms of activities, locale, etc. Thankfully my four sisters and I really like each other a whole lot and our spouses and children all get along too.
I read something on DesignMom about their family road trip where she had to remind herself daily that ‘Vacations are not for saving money. We save our money so we can spend it on vacation’. Our little family of 4 (two kids, 5 and 2) are going on a little weekend family vacation (with flights!) and it was very hard not to freak out over the cost. For airfare and lodging, we are spending $600 for a weekend, but we only make about $2900 a month, so that is a noticeable percentage. When you feel like you are just making ends meet with a bit extra in some months, it is hard to feel justified in spending so much money in so little time.
When I was growing up, our vacations tended to be family visits, camping trips, and road trips (often to visit family/friends). When we did bigger trips, we tended to stay at budget places like Comfort Inns. We went to Disney a few times (but stayed at non-Disney motels in Kissimmee). When I got to high school age, we went on a cruise with the extended family and did a trip to Europe. I also went away every summer to ballet programs around the country, and those were very expensive plus were like vacations in themselves.
In my early 20s, I got the travel bug and did a lot of international travel, staying in backpacker-level places or a notch just above that. At some point after I started working, I made the jump to staying in nicer places. Since having a child, we haven’t done any international travel, but we do go on at least one nice family trip per year, plus lots of smaller weekend trips/day trips/family visits, etc (no road trips because my husband thinks even two hours in a car is too much).
For our “big” annual trip as a family, we sometimes spend in the range of $5000 for accommodations for a week — more when you include everything (air, car, food). I don’t really have feelings about this. There definitely is a bit of the “we work hard so we have to pay a lot to relax the way we want to relax” mentality at work here. But with growing expenses (child-related), we are dialing it back a bit. When we were married with two full incomes and no child, we had no compunction going on major international trips and staying at great places — the money wasn’t really a consideration (though it wasn’t like we were celebrity-level spending by any means). But now, there’s much more thought and using Amex points or whatever to defray costs so we can do things we like without feeling like we can’t eat for a month afterward. That’s also why we have stayed domestic — international flights are horrifyingly expensive, so our entire budget would be eaten up by the plane fare. We do have bucket-list kind of trips we want to do as a family (safari, Europe, etc), but we want to do those when F is old enough to really remember them (we want CREDIT for those awesome trips as she gets older).
We have five kids (10 and under), and our vacations fall into these categories:
1. Flying cross-country to visit our siblings/kids’ cousins who live on the West Coast and have an extra minivan and a big house. So our expenses for those trips are only really airfare and then low-level excursions, like zoos and what-not. Airfare for 7, though, can put us around $2500. We do this trip once every other year.
2. Driving to a beach house and staying there for a week. We have always rented the house with siblings/friends, so we come in at $700 for the house rental. With everything else added up, that’s about $2000 for the week.
3. We recently moved for two years to Colorado, and we took the opportunity to drive to see lots of places. Grand Canyon! Steamboat Springs! Yellowstone! Rocky Mountains! Those trips were between 3 and 5 days long (so, 2 to 4 nights in a hotel.) Our kids are cool with long, 400-mile trips in the car. Our family is too big for one suite-style hotel room now, so we go for the lower-end hotels and get two rooms, trying to keep it between $180-$220 for each night. Those vacations cost us between $1200 and $2000 each.
We do try to be smart with our vacation choices. Renting houses is such a great deal because you have space to hang and a kitchen to cook in. We had a fun rule at gift shops: each kid could pick out something that was $3 or less. Kind of a ridiculous amount, but they liked to find things that fit that category, and there were enough options – a funky rock, a huge pencil, a slap bracelet, etc. I didn’t want to spend a fortune on gift store crap but I also wanted to let the kids pick out a little thing to remember the place.
We have been saving for Disney for three years. We’ll go next spring and drive, and we’ll stay in a vacation house with good friends. It will be a three-day drive, but we’d rather have the car than fly and have to rent a minivan.
We have two big trips coming up in the next 3-4 years. The first is a cross-country road trip to our family on the West Coast with the big house. We’ll take three weeks to do that trip (we have the time in the summer – we’re teachers – but we don’t have the money to really fly – we’re teachers!). The second is another road trip to Prince Edward Island/Nova Scotia. We’ll probably go for 10 days total, including the drive. Those will probably set us back $3000-$4000.
We use our tax return money toward vacations, and we have a vacation savings account that we throw money in when we can.
Our total vacation budget for our family each year is between $4000-$6000, depending on the trips we take that year.
As I look back on my vacationing life, I’ve done both expensive-big-infrequent and less expensive-smaller-more frequent trips. For a week and a half in Spain, we dropped 5 or 6 thousand, which makes my head ache a little now that we have a baby that needs a college savings account. But thinking of Spain still makes me happy every time.
So, now that we are parents, we haven’t done a big doozy, or even a medium-sized doozy. I am OK with that! I guess my point is: I am glad to have all my vacation memories, from the car trips to SD to the plane trips to Europe ones, but it is still a pain in the butt to make it happen, and I’m taking a breather from all the planning while our family is growing.
Re: affording Disney, when I was in 5th grade, and my brother was in 3rd, my mom took us (by herself, like a heroine!) but we stayed with her sister who lived a few hours away, drove, and only went for two days, and it was still amazing. We rode on Space Mountain and the Haunted Mansion, we saw the Indiana Jones movie magic show at MGM, one night we rode the ferry back to where we had parked and there was a fireworks show over the water. We didn’t eat too extravagantly, just some snacks while we were in the park. I was pretty aware of money already and shocked to see people just ordering food at the overpriced restaurants willy-nilly, actually, and buying $25 t-shirts!
Before kids, my husband and I used to take a yearly vacation to Mexico and stay at an all inclusive on the beach. It was lovely and pretty cheap. Airfare, food and lodging usually cost us about $1,200 each. We used to book with Apple vacations; not sure if that is still around or a good deal. It’s been about 10 years since we’ve done it.
Now that we have 3 children under age 8, vacations are a little different. We started a yearly trip to Door County, WI (we live in southern WI) every summer. We rent a house on the beach with my parents and sister and brother in law. We can rent a great 4 bedroom for $1,800 a week. Split that among 3 families and you are talking a cheap vacation. We drive there and we cook most of our meals at home. We do a lot of fun activities like renting bikes, going to different beaches, shopping, hiking, etc. I bet we spend $1,000 total on everything, including food and gas. The kids adore the intense time with their grandparents and we all love it too.
My kids are getting to the age where they are noticing other kids go on spring break and winter break vacations to places like Disney or CA. It’s not really in our budget right now, and the thought of sleeping in a hotel room with all of them for a week is horrifying to me, so it probably won’t happen soon. But I guess someday we’ll have to do it.
I vote for establishing some sort of yearly vacation that is as cheap as you can do it. We all LOVE our summer beach trip, affectionately and regularly referred to as “vacation house.” I think my kids will remember it as some of the best times of their childhood. And we didn’t have to spend a ton of money or stress about hotels and lines and airplanes. Travel can be fun, but for my temperament, the ages of the kids, and our financial situation, this is perfect for us.
I feel like my target for vacations is to pay $200/night per lodging (for my family, but that’s 3, usually one hotel room, etc), $50/day per rental car, and around $500 per person for flights.
And $100/day for food, for all of us.
And then and extra $500 overall for nonsense, activities, presents, whatever.
That’s very general, but within what I budget for when I vacation.
So when we’ve taken flying places/renting a car vacations it has taken more saving up to get to that and then fewer auxiliary vacations.
Sometimes we just go for a 3 day weekend and then it’s just the cost of food and lodging, and we’ll take more of those in a year.
Or one big vacation.
This year we’re driving down to San Diego and staying for a week. No flight or rental car cost, but it’s still our Big Vacation this year, and for awhile.
I grew up tent camping with my family (we even had a VW pop-top bus when I was really little) and then taking “trips” (as opposed to vacations) to visit family because no one lived anywhere near us in Alaska. My husband grew up taking massive (to me) road trips (WV or NC to northern MI), mostly to visit family. In both cases, they weren’t really vacations…we hardly ever went anywhere except to visit family. When my younger brother was 2 & I was 6, my family went to Hawaii (surprisingly cheap from Anchorage, even now) and when I was 8 we went to FL, but that was for a family reunion. The first non-family-visit vacation I remember was when I was 12 & my aunt & uncle took me to Washington DC, Williamsburg, Monticello, etc. But it was just me, not my brothers & parents. I traveled a lot when I was single & Husband & I traveled some before we had kids.
Now that Husband & I have kids, we have a similar problem – if we go anywhere, usually it’s to visit his family, none of whom live in our area. Also, I’m not a huge fan of road trips, but I am trying to push my limits – we have a 1-week road trip booked for this summer to see the South Dakota badlands & Mt Rushmore. Last summer we took a road trip/ferry boat to visit Husband’s family in MI, which ended up being kind of a disaster. We planned to stay at his aunt’s cottage, but on the 2nd evening, the septic tank overflowed into the basement/first floor where we were staying – luckily, one of our kids told us the toilet “flushed funny” and we opened the storage room door to see the raw sewage water coming up out of the drain & had enough time to fling (literally) our belongings upstairs – I stood on the stairs & caught the bags as my husband threw them to me while walking through raw sewage water in his BARE FEET – I made him was in diluted bleach. Our only loss was a Cars car we forgot on the floor…and our accommodations for the next 3 nights of the trip…in the high season (August) on the shore of Lake Michigan…where a motel room down the street cost THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS…and there’s no cell phone signal to call anyone or search for hotel deals…and our host had no wifi. We ended up driving away from the sewage-flooded cottage at 9pm with our baggage randomly shoved in the back of our car, looking for a place to stay that night. We found a motel down the road for a mere $250 per night (breakfast NOT included), but they literally only had 1 night free. The next 2 nights we had to move again to a town 45 minutes away and our hotel was still $225 per night. I have no plans to return to MI anytime soon.
So anyway, road trips. My other problem is I somehow believe that airfare should be about $200 per ticket. Anywhere. Yeah, not really the case in this day and age! We did get $225 RT tickets to Houston (more family, so no other expenses besides a rental car) for Thanksgiving this year & then used my husband’s air miles to plan a family trip to Washington, DC in October when the kids have a fall school break. We are staying in a VRBO apartment (Vacation Rentals By Owner – HIGHLY recommend), plan to make breakfast in the apartment plus some lunches & then go out for dinner. That’s pretty much how we do vacations now…as cheaply as possible to still have a good experience.
We did do Disney last year, but we had free flights from Husband’s air miles for 3 of our 4 plane tickets, we got military tickets for Disney via my Dad (4-day park hopper tickets, which cost literally 10% of face value, I think – my parents came on the trip with us & paid for the park passes), free Epcot tickets for one day from my Dad’s family, and tried to otherwise optimize our stay in every possible way. Husband swears we will never go back, but we actually have a 1-day park hopper ticket left for each of us that we didn’t use (and it never expires – I think they don’t issue those anymore starting this year), so I’d like to do a Kennedy Space Center trip with my science/space-made kids & combine it with 1 more day at Disney, maybe next year. This time we’d probably stay in a VRBO property, which are quite affordable in the Orlando area.
My mom is planning a big family vacation to Ireland for next summer (June 2016). Our kids would be 11 & 9 and it would be their first time leaving the country. But the key here is my parents would pay for most of it – my mom wants to use some of her mom’s estate to take my family & my brothers to Ireland, where her family is originally from. I’m sure we would incur some expenses (food, souvenirs), but my parents would pay for the majority of it.
I will say our friends with only 1 kid travel a LOT more. In one family, the husband travels a lot for work (so he has a lot of air miles/free tickets) & is originally from Romania, so they go to Europe at least yearly to see his family. The husband’s adult daughter from an earlier marriage/relationship also lives outside the US, so they visit her too, as well as doing vacation trips. Our other friends with 1 kid also have a lot of air miles from the wife’s work travel & mostly stay within the US, but also take a lot of long weekend/holiday trips to visit friends. They usually stay with friends for most of it, so no hotel costs, but they probably go somewhere every couple of months. We get a moderate number of airline miles from Husband’s work travel, usually enough for 1 family trip per year (4 people), plus we have a credit card with the same airline, so we also have a companion ticket to use each year. Compared to either of our families of origin, we do a lot of travel, but not compared to our friends or our kid’s friends at school, we don’t.
We live in Vegas so our vacay destinations are usually southern California or Utah. A disneyland trip or a Sea World or Legoland trip is usually 2 or 3 nights and over 1200 bucks for hotel/entry fees/food. We flew once to San Diego just to avoid the drive (kids hate car rides) and LOVED it. But we’re a fmaily of four, not seven. I will gladly fork over 200-300 a night for a good hotel. I loathe cheap hotels. Been wanting to fly to San Francisco or Chicago but feel like we need a week to make it happen and hotels in those cities for a week are worse than airfare. I have vacation envy. I dream of renting a cabin by the lake or going to Canada or Alaska or Europe someday with the kids….I travelled alot in the car as a kid and to the UK more than a few times. Before kids my hubby and I would go to a different city every year. But now, 2 kids, school calendar, work time, we get one vacation per year always in late August sand it always costs 1000 – 1500 no matter where we go in S. California. My three day weekend angst sends me to Zion in Utah sometimes for less than 500 bucks. Cheap hotels, cheap eats, easy entertainment. I wish the kids would tolerate a long car drive to, say, Colorado just for something more diverse. The idea of a 10,000 vacation has me stunned. We dumped alot of money into college savings plans this year and are pretty dang broke. Staycations SUCK.
My husband is from Florida and it’s very important to us that they know not only the whole passel of aunts, uncles, and cousins down there, but also the place. We want them to feel comfortable in that place. So, to do that, we have to go down there every year. We stay with family, but it’s still stunningly expensive, usually around $3,000 when it’s all done ($1,500-$2000 for plane tickets, $300-$400 for car, $500-600 for food, whatever). I’ve gotten pretty used to this and now just kind of consider it a cost of living necessity.
BUT.
This summer my sister would like me to go with her to take my mom on a European trip she’s always wanted to do. Her health is declining, so it is a kind of now or never situation. It’s going to be around $3,500 PER PERSON to do this and oh my god. It makes me want to lay down and die to think about it. I know I need to go. I know I won’t regret it. It’s only slightly more expensive than the annual family trip, but it feels like so much. Also, it has the “luxury” feel to it. I don’t need to go on this trip, like I need to go to Florida every year.
I just don’t know. The whole thing makes me rather panicky.
D.C. is a great way to go. Airfare is a drag for that many people, but if you can find a temporary rental or stay in one of the many areas outside of town. Travel by Subway and public transit (awesome system) and all the attraction are free (our tax dollars). I’m sorry I can’t give you prices, it’s been 20 years, but I do remember that it was a really fun vacation and place to visit. .
The short answer I have to your question is, no, I do not think you are being squirrelly at all! Vacations are expensive and I too have a tough time swallowing the costs when I start thinking of all the other things that money could buy. Especially when we have a “fixer upper” house and a never ending list of home projects to complete. Once, when I realized what we were planning to spend on a potential vacation, I actually opted to cancel it and used the money to renovate a bathroom instead.
With that said, I learned the hard way that when I don’t take vacation (as in taking off work to take a trip somewhere – preferably near an ocean), in the summer I start to feel bitter about it and wind up ranting to my husband that we are boring and are depriving our children of precious family memories. As you can imagine, I’m a real peach to live with during those times. So I’ve learned to fight my urge to save the money because in the end it is worth it to my sanity (and my marriage) to have a vacation each summer.
We will spend about $2,200 for a week long vacation at the beach with our family of four. It’s within driving distance (no airfare), we’ll be in a condo so we’ll eat-in for most every meal and will do small, inexpensive excursions like goofy-golf or a night at the movies. I know, relativey speaking, that this is a GREAT price for what we are getting, it’s not a stretch financially, but it still feels like a lot of money.
We typically fly cross-country to visit family for a week either during the holidays, or for Spring Break. Since we typically travel at peak season, flights range from $1200-$1800. We have minimal expenses from there since we stay with family, eat their food and have generous parents who insist on paying for any outings since we came from so far away (I know we are really lucky in this way).
If we visited family over the holidays and don’t have any plans for Spring Break I will typically take the kids on an overnight excursion and visit an amusement park or touristy area. Cost usually ends up being around $500.
It always seems like a lot of money to spend at the time, but big-picture, $5,000 is worth it for the sanity and memories that we’re getting out of it. This has actually been a very therapeutic exercise for me – thanks Swistle!!
We have a big Vacation Plan. We want to do something every year, and we sketched out a basic plan for the next few years: anniversary trip w/o kids, Disney ($$$!), smaller driving trips, etc. I figured out how much money we would need for each of those things and divided that by the number of months until each trip. Now we set aside that amount into a savings account each month. Vacations are important to me, but so are budgets! I feel good about this system for a few reasons:
1) we are prioritizing experiences as a family
2) we know where the money to pay for it is coming from (barring job loss, etc)
3) that amount would have been piddled away month by month and wouldn’t have helped worth college/braces anyway–it would have been spent on eating out and other material things.
Vacations are tricky to pay for when you look at the final price tag– it’s so unpleasant to think about the vacation vs braces vs retirement, etc, but the truth for me is that the money we save each month for vacations wouldn’t be put into an account for braces/college/retirement anyway, so it would be frittered away on something I care about less than I do vacations.
It seems to me that there are two kinds of people/commenters:
1) those who really enjoy vacations, and whose attitudes about them thus involve some degree of guilt/justification – i.e. this is a self-indulgent expense, but one that can be justified by referencing (a) how hard we work for/deserve it, (b) how necessary for family closeness it is, and/or (c) paying for it by eliminating other self-indulgent expenses
2) those whose vacations are influenced at least in part by a feeling of SHOULD – we should go on vacations as a family because if we’re not we’re boring/wasting our lives.
I am firmly in the second camp. Travel really stresses me out, to the point where whatever enjoyment I derive from the experience is usually thoroughly offset by the stress of planning/anticipating it. Part of the stress comes from how expensive it is, and the corresponding pressure to have a REALLY good time, and the fear that I won’t be able to have a really good time because I’ll be under so much pressure to enjoy every moment.
For me, the solution is to do family vacations infrequently (we do get away each year to my in-laws’ family cottage, which is a whole OTHER source of stress!) and expensively. Rather than trying to reduce the stress by reducing the expenditure, I spend more, but I pay for it all in advance so that the money is gone and done for before we ever leave (credit cards paid and everything). This year we did Disney, which ended up costing about $8000 for a family of four, in part because we did the Disney Dining Plan, knowing that it was probably more expensive, but following the rule that it’s better to spend more money up-front than to pay for each meal separately with the corresponding sensation that Money Is Leaking Away. That was our first family trip in 4 years, and we’ll probably do another one in maybe two years or so. My husband and I do one long weekend each fall for approx. $3000 (it’s expensive because we buy good NFL tickets that make up a significant portion of the cost). I’d say our annual travel expenditures will probably average out to about $6000 per year.
This is such an interesting thread and it reminds me so much of a post you did a while ago about what may be considered a frivolous expense to some can be essential to others. I think you used perfume as an example and it was so enlightening to me that I reference with my kids often when talking about why some families spend money on x and we don’t.
As for vacations, based on this thread I think we fall on the vacations are very important/we spend way more than the average side of the spectrum. There are a few keys reasons for this. (1) our backgrounds – my husbands family did tons of road trips all over the us on a shoestring and he cherishes those memories. My family never went anywhere but limited day trips or to stay at my grandparents beach house for a day or two at a time and I always wished we would have travelled. (2) We both love travel and want our kids to see a wide variety of places and be good travelers. (3) We both travel pretty frequently for business which not only gives us miles to use but it also makes me less wary of the hassles of travel in general or with kids. If I weren’t on an airplane so frequently solo I think that I works be nervous about negotiating airports etc. but basically complicated travel no longer scares me. (4) I am really conscious of the fact that I only have so many weekends and summers with our kids. I am not sure my husband is as worried about this but he is all about memories and experiences over stuff. (5) Along those lines we prioritize experiences over stuff in our general everyday family spending. Not that skipping a trip by the dollar spot at target whenever possible or basically always cooking at home/having family meals together all year and not dining out makes up the cost of our trips but it does help and also on trips we basically avoid souvenirs and other things like super expensive restaurant meals bc our kids don’t expect it. (6) We are fortunate to have a lot of seniority with our companies that gives us both good vacation benefits and the means to prioritize travel. (7) We both really like planning trips (dh especially) and get a lot of pleasure just in the planning/anticipation. (8) We both work at fairly intense jobs and treasure the ability being away gives us to unplug and be purely focused on our family.
In terms of what we do and spend, it probably will seem a lot and in the last few years since our kids are a bit older it has ramped up. (We have three–5, 9 and 12.). For the past five years we have taken a trip spring break week all of the years but one. One trip was a big trip to see the Grand Canyon and lots of az with extended family and my mil subsidized some of the cost but I think we still spent about 2000. One trip was a road trip to a state park and Niagara Falls and our costs were probably 1000 all in. The other two, including this coming year, were trips to fl resorts (not mouse) and with airfare and food and excursions we will be about 6k this year and I think we were more like 5k when we went 4 years ago. These trips are to two different parts of Florida and Florida was selected both times for warmth/beach and deals on the kind of place we want (2 bedroom condo style with kitchen in a resort) rather than the specific location. Meaning we could have just as easily gone to the Caribbean had we found a deal. We did a bucket list of vacation destinations large and small a few years ago and the keys were on the list so that is where we are headed in a few weeks but if I hadn’t been able to get a decent (and I say that in relative terms) deal we would be going elsewhere. Also when I give these numbers they are the cash equivalents. Where we can we use Amex points and miles. I try to keep domestic airfare to less than 400pp and keep hotel and rental car costs reasonable. We have not gone international besides Canada and a cruise with our kids yet because of the flight costs. But we are saving miles and points and Europe and a safari are on the bucket list. We make put own breakfast and some other meals. However with this trip we are springing for some pricy fishing expeditions and sails and a swim with dolphins because they are all things we all want to do. One factor in our spring break trip decisions is that all three kids have the week off school so we would have to pay something for daycare for them anyway which would cost between 500 to 1k depending on wether or not we did camps or a sitter. We have chosen to spend more money and do something as a family instead.
We also do a week long trip to the beach with family at the end of each summer. Again we skip camp or sitter costs that week but we still spend far more. We choose to rent a really fabulous house so we could do this for less but even splitting house costs when I factor in food and things like fishing trips etc we spend about 3500 for that trip.
We have grandparents with vacation houses in two different locations that are very significant (7 to 12) hours away from us. We go visit both usually driving (although we did fly one time to one but we probably won’t again because of cost) at least once a year each. Those trips cost about 1k each.
Dh and also do weekend to 4 day things both as a couple and with longstanding friends each year. We usually do one to
together and one each separate but sometimes there are more or less depending on how circumstances present. These cost on average 1k but have been less or more depending on opportunity.
We use bonus money for these trips and if the bonus didn’t come we would definitely readjust. However it is so important to us I know we would still do something each year. Just typing this out did make me really think about these expenses in a new way and also really appreciate how lucky we are to be able to go to these places but it also made me even more aware of how much pleasure I get out of spending this money. Again thanks for this thread. I think it is fascinating.
We havent gone on a lot of vacations yet so i have 2 experiences i can give you. We rent a 3 bedroom house (ranch or cape style) on Cape Cod a 1/4 mile from the beach for a week every summer. The house ranges from $2000-$2600 for the houses we have rented. We dont get high end houses, but we do want A/C and wifi and cable and washer/dryer. We prob spend around $1000 more on food and activities, but we only go kayaking once and mini golfing and otherwise we mostly just go to the beach for free. We are now planning our first and probably only trip to Disney and Universal. We are using a Disney Travel agent. She works from home and gets a commission from Disney. She is booking our airfare, hotel, 7 days of park passes (dont forget fast passes so you can skip the lines), meal plans (including making all meal reservations 180 days in advance) and transfer between universal and disney after the third night. We really want to see all of the Harry Potter stuff at Universal. Here are her quotes for November. We are staying in delux resorts on the properties because we are doing this once. $4,528.60 for 4 days at Disney and $2059.54 at Universal. Those prices include everything except souvenirs and meals for 2.5 days at Universal, but it does include the ciast if meals for 4 days at Disney. Hope that helps! Fyi, the mote days of park passes you buy the cheaper they get. We were going to have 2 down days at the hotel pool to save money but it was only $140 less total for 4 people, so we figured we would just buy the 2 extra days of park passes and not feel bad if we dont spend the entire day there. I can give you my agents info if you want to see if there are any packages you could get.
I forgot to say we drive to Cape Cod because we live in NH. Great beaches for kids! Warm water and no waves
Reading through these comments makes me realize that we are not borderline ridiculous travel spenders but whole-hog, bat-shit crazy travel spenders.
I don’t have much to add, other than that 1) we have an entirely separate vacations savings fund that is practically sacred. $100/month, automatic. It’s a real priority for us–I have serious wanderlust and actually have a travel-related tattoo. So, yeah, very committed to traveling.
2) We just switched from a CC that got airline miles to one that gets cash back, with the intention of putting the cash back in the travel fund. We went back and forth for awhile about what we wanted to do.
3) I’m really shocked about how far people are willing to drive! I’m borderline afraid of flying but I still wouldn’t think to drive more than four to five hours. Maybe six if there were a neat place to stop, eat, etc midway? (See also: previous use of airline miles.) We also generally go to large cities with transit systems and have never rented a car.
4) I don’t usually think of traveling as ‘vacation’? Like, it is, but I don’t like going to a place just to sit and look at the ocean–I want to see the city, talk to locals, figure out the public transit,etc.
Wanderlust! You hit the nail on the head! I didn’t express that in my other comment, but I have extreme wanderlust. I moved a lot when I was single without commitments-and I used to make road trips and sleep in the back of my truck at rest stops to save money. This was in the 1980’s-and I had a very protective big dog with me. I love to travel, and luckily my daughter and husband feel the same. It seems like either you love to travel or you don’t-and it is a priority or it isn’t. No right answer-to each their own.
Travel As A Political Act by Rick Steeves is a really good book.
My husband and I both have the feeling of “we can make more money, but can we do this now?”. Like Europe-you have to have good knees to do what we like to do-climb, hike, walk-we want to do it while we can!
We could take a vacation every year, except that I notice vacation = more work for mother (I.e., me). So we stayed home last year, and I’m debating a long weekend driving vacation this year.
We have 3 kids (6, 3, and 1.5). Our last vacation was 4 days in Boston almost 2 years ago, when I was pregnant with #3.
We drove there, stayed in a distant hotel that I scored on Priceline for $49/night, and then drove into the city for children’s museums, the common, etc. We stopped in Plymouth on the way home and went to Plimoth Plantation.
In all I would guess we spent about $200 on the hotel, $350 on admission fees, and $200 on dining out (my kids were not great at sit down restaurants, yay for fast food and pizza in the hotel room). So $750.
Before I quit to be a SAHM, we did a week at Disney with 2 kids, staying at the hotel with the giraffes and zebras, for about $6k. My 3 y o DD had tantrums the entire time.
That made me vow I am not taking anyone under 5 to Disney ever again.
Most of our neighbors spend between $5k-$20k/year, so it’s only a matter of time before the kids start complaining about how everyone else got to go to St. Barts and I took them to the public library story hour.
Mwahahaha.
I just read through all the comments and wow, great discussion here.
For us, right now with three young kids, we only fly to visit family. And while they count as vacation days and I love seeing family, it doesn’t really seem like a “vacation” vacation. So, I like do at least vacation-y vacation a year as well. We live 2 – 3 hours from mountains and 3 – 4 hours from beaches, so we usually go to one of those locations, get a relatively inexpensive vacation rental (cheaper and nicer than a hotel with 3 kids) and do free or cheap things around where we are staying. We’ll eat breakfast and sometimes lunch at the rental, but I refuse to do real cooking while on vacation, so we always eat out for dinner. Plus, I’m a foodie, so part of the fun of traveling is eating at cool, local restaurants.
I’ll chime in and agree with the poster quite a ways up that Washington DC is a pretty great place for a really good family vacation on a budget. Once you get out there almost all of the attractions are free—all of the Smithsonians, the Capital, the White House (if you can get in), etc. Stay in Arlington or Alexandria at a hotel within walking distance of the Metro and your transportation costs will be minimal. We stayed in a very nice Holiday Inn that had a kids eat free deal, so that saved a ton on meal expense.
While in theory I value experiences more than things, my actions don’t show that; plus extras like vacation would be paid for solely by me and I would have to basically forego my entire discretionary spend for the year to do a “big” trip like Disney (and would still take on debt).
At this stage, typical vacations for me and my family fall into two buckets:
1) Free family vacation to the beach. My parents pay for the rooms, so we just have to pay to get down there. Flying costs $1500-$2000 for the 4 of us, so we drive the 10 hours instead, and use points for the hotel we stay at on the way down/back if possible. Hubs and I split the cost because we don’t budget for vacations in our joint account, the whole shebang runs us maybe $650 total. If my parents were to stop paying for this trip, I don’t think we would go, because where else would we get a beach trip for $650?
2) A weekend in a hotel with a water park. Preferably one we have a gift card / groupon for. I think we paid like $400 for great wolf (eek) and around $200 for maui sands for a 1 night stay. Great wolf was nice but we prefer the cheaper places since the experience isn’t all THAT different.
I am guessing that as the kids get older, we will still gravitate towards cheaper trips while continuing to maximize flight and hotel points because that is how we roll. Lots of camping, but maybe in beautiful places (national parks) where we just have to pay for flights and rental cars, and lodging is cheap or free. I feel like $2000 is in the realm of reasonable for a week-long trip for a family of 4 where the kids are old enough to appreciate / remember the trip. And when they are high school / college age, we might upgrade to cruises if our income can support it.
I’ll always remember the first “real” vacation with my parents – we flew to Hawaii and stayed for a week in a beach front hotel. It was awesome. Plus there was a hurricane when we were there – talk about EXCITING.
I’ve travelled with the kids as babies, to Europe & they don’t remember, but I do & they still love listening to the stories at 14 & 16 – so I’m glad we have those experiences/memories.
I’ve taken them to San Francisco & yeah it’s expensive ($5k I’d guess). And I’ve taken them to south Africa for 3 weeks – relatives are there so we had a house to use for some of the time & another relative generously paid for the game park accommodations for all of us – but between airfare, lodging, food, car etc – it was probably a $15k dollar trip. But totally worth it. My kids will always remember that trip.
Iceland is our next destination.
I love this post and all the comments! It’s so interesting to see different perspectives and opinions on something like this.
I personally love to travel, as does my husband, so this is a priority for us. As much as it can be, anyway. We both grew up in families that traveled pretty regularly, although the modes and destinations were different – we were more of a Disney World or cruise family, and we flew whenever possible. By comparison, his family would roadtrip from Houston to Washington, D.C. without batting an eye and then spend two weeks visiting every historical site known to man.
We moved from Texas to San Francisco in summer 2012 so since then we’ve mostly been making a bunch of day trips in order to explore our new surroundings (and recover from massive moving expenses). “Vacations” have primarily consisted of visiting family back in Texas, which eats up both the travel budget and vacation days. We typically go back in the summer and at Christmas. Summer visits are staggered – for instance, I’ll take the kids to visit my parents, stay for a few days, then leave them there for another week or so. At that point they’ll coordinate with my in-laws (who live a 4-hour drive from my folks) to transfer the kids, who then stay another week or so with them before my husband goes to visit and retrieve. So not really a lot of quality family vacation time here. Christmas is typically 2 weeks, split evenly between both sets of grandparents. Also it is a logistical nightmare, which takes some more of the vacation feeling out. Though my husband and I do enjoy our at-home time sans children.
That said, this past Christmas my family (parents + sister/BIL) decided to do Disney World instead of just hanging out at their home. So we flew cross-country to spend 5 days, 4 nights in Orlando. Plane tickets weren’t terrible – the kids and I went via Austin and spent a few days with my parents beforehand. I generally try to avoid paying more than $500 r/t per person and I think we were able to keep to that. The Disney portion, though…gah. We stayed in one of the Disney resorts and got the meal plan as well, which I highly recommend. We used to go to Disney World every other summer or so when I was growing up because my family had a timeshare in nearby Kissimmee, and even as a kid I recognized the hassle of renting a car, going to the store to stock the condo’s kitchen, having to drive back and forth to the Disney parks each day, park the car, etc., so I can definitively say that to me, it is SO WORTH IT to pay a bit more stay and eat on site (my parents agree, by the way). So anyway, we stayed in a mid-range Disney resort, bought the meal plan plus 4-day park hopper passes for 4 people and paid just shy of $4000. Really if you think about the convenience of transportation from the airport, between parks, hotel and all meals paid, it isn’t a bad deal. Expenses were staggered a little though – we booked the Disney reservations 11 months in advance and paid over that time, and we booked/paid our airfare in early summer for Christmas travel. Easier for me to stomach than thousands upon thousands of dollars in one fell swoop.
This summer my husband and I are taking a trip without the kids. We’re going to spend a week in Norway, and are paying to fly my mom out to our house to watch the kids and the dog (whose boarding expenses cost upwards of $700 the last time, ACK). So between the r/t airfare from SFO to Norway, the hotels, concert tickets (we’re seeing Metallica while in Bergen) and my mom’s plane ticket, we’ve already spent about $3500 on this trip and it doesn’t even happen until August. We still have to book train tickets and a few other things. But again, paying incrementally makes me feel better about it – by the time we get there, our only expenses will be food and incidentals.
As some previous commenters mentioned, I’m starting to fret about the number of summers we have left with both kids. My son is 12 and in 6th grade, so not too many of those big family vacation opportunities are left. We’re looking at European cruises for next summer, because that is the kind of huge vacation I always wanted to take as a kid, and both of mine (the youngest is 7) are at a perfect age to both remember and appreciate something like that. I think. I hope. We’ll see. I’m putting aside as much money as I can each month to see if we can make it happen. Because for a family of 4, we’re probably looking at close to 10K by the time you pay for international airfare, etc. GAAAAAAH.
We don’t really go on vacations at this point in our lives, but I thought I could speak to vacations as a child and my current thoughts on the philosophy of vacation.
When I hear how often my friends take their toddlers to interesting places, I feel guilty. My son hasn’t even been to the zoo yet and he is almost 2! But then I ask myself what he would enjoy the most: something expensive or blowing bubbles on the deck. Usually the answer is blowing bubbles on the deck. Maybe we’ll travel more when he gets older if I get a job with more vacation time or if we move closer to family. I totally agree with an earlier comment that most of our trips could be considered a tax on our decision to live across the country from our families. I also agree with another comment that sometimes time off is more limiting than money.
As a kid, we often went on vacation. Every year we went to Callaway Gardens Summer Family Adventure and I highly recommend it (we usually had two adults and four kids, but there are 4 queen beds). It only got boring after about 8 years of going, and I’d like to go back when the kid (or hopefully kids) are old enough to enjoy doing circus activities and water skiing. We also went snow skiing every few years. We went on other vacations that I honestly can’t remember. We went camping about once or twice per year. We lived close to Disney and went so often that it was no longer fun. In fact, the day trips we took as a family (for instance to a Japanese garden) are just as sharp in my memory as the week long vacations we took. Adding it all up, I have no idea how my parents found the time for all these vacations, though I don’t have any memories of them taking vacation time to stay home.
My husband’s family vacation was a trip to a beach house. He says he like it because there was nothing to do, so they played board games and built sand castles. I guess he means it was relaxing.
Now, I hate to travel. I think that limits my vacations as much as time off and more than cost. I don’t need time off to relax. I do want to see things like the Grand Canyon though, so we’re taking the time to do this and I’m trying not to think about the cost and the inconvenience. Is it bad that I consider a vacation an inconvenience? It is something I’ve always wanted to do.
Decide whether you need a vacation and decide what you want from a vacation: time to relax? thrill? awe? family time? learning? Everything except thrill can probably be done fairly cheaply, though with time to relax you might have to pay for someone to watch and entertain your kids (Callaway Gardens would be great for that, actually it would be great for pretty much all of the things you might want for a vacation, especially if you live within driving distance of Georgia).
This is so funny! I grew up near Callaway Gardens, so we used to go to the “beach” there ALL THE TIME in the summer, and went on school field trips to the Gardens many times. I’ve never heard of people going on actual vacation there, though I know they have cabins and everything. To me it was like an extension of where I lived so I figured no one outside of our area had even heard of it. The circus!! The water skiing!
Conversely, I had no idea locals were there watching the circus and going to the butterfly gardens. Did you get to swing from the trapeze?
I grew up in New Orleans, and we took several family vacations there when I was a kid. :) I’ve been surprised by all the people who have commented they’ve gone to New Orleans on vacation.
I have some vacation feelings that have been included in some previous comments, but repeated here so I can include THE GUILT. I live far from my family and they rarely visit me. My brother has never been to visit, my sister twice in 8 years, and no one from my extended family has ever come. I/We are at the age where people are getting married and having babies all the time back home, and I want to be there for these things. I DO. But I also want to go somewhere new. I’m not a big traveler, but I like seeing new things and trying new things. I’m not so wealthy in either time or money that I can fit in a genuine vacation every year on top of a week home at Christmas and what will be the births of two new nephew(s)/niece(s) this year. My Mom and I had discussed me joining her for a conference at a resort in Arizona, followed by a short roadtrip to visit friends in San Diego. This, to me, sounds like a great vacation–my mom/her company covers the cost of the hotel in Arizona, I buy my airfare and chip in for hotels/rental cars where needed. But this means missing my older niece’s birthday party if I’m going to get home for the births of millions of new family members. I find myself feeling resentful if all of my time is taken up this way, and guilty if I don’t choose to spend time with them. I know that this particular era will pass and in 5 years perhaps we’ll all be meeting on a beach in Florida, but in the meantime I just want to feel like my time is my own. Yeah, I realize this whole post is kind of bratty. I apologize if it goes beyond the tolerably bratty.
I don’t think you are being bratty at all. I went through the same thing, I moved thousands of miles away from my family-and for years I spent every vacation and extra dollar going back to visit them for birthdays, Christenings…
Then came the trip where all my sisters did was fight with each other-and I remember so clearly-looking at them and thinking “no more!”. I spent a lot of money on airfare to get back, and I was having a miserable time. I think even if they hadn’t been fighting, I had come to realize that I wanted to spend my money and vacation time doing other things. They actually were very understanding when I told them-and of course I have gone back and visited over the years (this was in 1993), but I stopped thinking I owed them those visits. I hope you can get over the feeling of guilt, and plan some awesome trips!
I love this comment section, and thought I’d comment because my situation seems really similar to yours. I have 6 kids, ages 4-12, (twins are 4), and I stay home with the kids. Vacations where flying is required don’t really seem like a viable option. Most of our vacations involve driving somewhere and staying with family. When we get to stay in a hotel my kids feel like it’s a real vacation, but we have to get to get 2 rooms at a time, because I can NOT figure out how to cram 8 people into a 2 queen room!! So that’s not affordable either. We did get a credit card that gives us points for every $ we spend & we pay all of our bills with that card and then often use the points for free hotel rooms.
Our biggest vacation has been to take our 2 oldest to Disneyland for 5 days, 3 yrs ago. We stayed off site & still had the best time. With flights the whole trip probably cost $3000, (yikes) but because we only took 2 kids, it actually felt like a vacation for my husband and me. (I feel like Vacations with young kids don’t often feel like vacation, just more work in an unfamiliar place!). Our plan is in another yr to take the middle children (once they’re old enough), and then save up to take the twins, probably 3 yrs later. I think this works well for us, it’s special for the kids to get the parents a little more 1 on 1, and it’s cake for the parents to only watch 1 child each!!
In the meantime, I guess I’ll keep reinforcing the feeling that a hotel pool constitutes a family vacation. :)
That is brilliant! Taking just the child/children who are of the right age. Genius. Why I have I never heard this suggested before?
I wondered the same thing, then I realized that to take three kids separately, you’ll have to pay the adult ticket 3 times. Still, if we have many kids and live close to Disney, I’ll definitely be considering this. It could be special one-on-one time with each child.
Now that quite some time has past, I think it might be okay to go a little off-topic. And I am highly impressed by how ON-topic this enormous thread has been. Anyways… Your feelings about AACK-so-much-money-but-maybe-that-is-just-what-it-costs are very similar to how I felt about upsizing homes (We were a family of five in under 1200sf – not tragic by any means but it made for a lot of irritability.). Eventually the feeling faded but it took a couple of years of online window shopping on a semi-regular basis for the going market rate to sink in as just what it costs. You may not feel that you have the time for that for family vacations but I find it useful for predictable major outlays. Ymmv.
This topic has me lying awake at night ever since I read it. Such a tense subject with income levels and all. We have an income of $50,000. We also will be paying off a new roof for the next year or two, so debt. We haven’t saved for college, and probably will not be able to. Although we’re saving for retirement, I feel we need to save more. And we don’t have 3 months worth of living expenses saved.
All of which to say I don’t think we can take expensive vacations. But if we had a bigger income I would want to. Would you put vacations above college savings?
So we take road trips to see family, which isn’t a real vacation, though fun. And we go camping, and make great memories.
My problem with spending more on a tight income is expectations. I hope you will talk about it, Swistle. If I have been saving for 3 years, planning a vacation, I expect a lot. For me to give up new shoes for 3 years, tighten the food budget, do without things like decor for the walls or new towels or fun outings in our area, all to save for the dream vacation, my expectations are WAY TOO HIGH.
If we’re spending more than $1000, I feel like we have to make the most of it. Have fun all the time. Do ALL the things. And make ourselves tired and miserable in the process. Or I go into it a little more relaxed, but something goes wrong- the van breaks down, we all get sick with a stomach bug, the place we planned to visit is closed, it rains the whole week, etc.
If I could tell myself we would do it again next year, I could deal. But years of penny pinching to make it happen means I’m not ok with anything less than stellar.
I read my comment and I sounded miserable and whiney.
Really I like camping. We will go Hunting Island, SC for beach camping this spring, and are all looking forward to it. It is a lot of work getting ready, but it suits our family to be out in nature, with a slow pace and no rushing. We are mostly introverts in our family. Our kids are 2,4,6, and the older ones want to live in the woods someday. They also talk about when they are 16 and 18, and will fly to the jungles of South America together.
It just gets hard when my friend is getting back from Disney for the second time this year already, and my other friend is going to Europe and Puerto Rico.
No, not whiney! It was exactly what Swistle was looking for. Real numbers, real feelings. Growing up, my family over-spent on vacations (among other things, it wasn’t just vacations) and then it made much of the other times very stressful. I remember the whole family being tense about money. And when financial hard times came later, there were no savings. And looking back I can second-guess some stuff and I feel like a lot of the modest vacations (family campground stuff) were just as meaningful and the big trips. Not that I don’t appreciate those, too, but I was/am aware of the emotional cost.
I will go back and read all the comments but wanted to skip down and give our situation first because this is super-timely for me – we go south every winter and it’s time for me to figure out where we’ll be going next year because we use Airmiles and the window for the best seats is just opening now, but rising prices and a falling Canadian dollar are giving me angst this year.
First of all, you should know that I’m a little bit cheap, that my husband and I make a comfortable middle-class income, and that except for 3 glorious trips to Florida with my grandmother as a kid, we were a camping road trip family when I was a kid. I am not that keen on camping, and I’ve vowed to never do the strike camp, drive for hours, set-up camp every single day-style vacations of my youth. I want a home base, preferably to be changed only a couple of times during a week at most , and for it to have plumbing.
Also, we live in Canada. Airfare is expensive, but the winters are long and bitter. I don’t like to spend money unnecessarily (e.g. my 2 kids’ clothes (and a lot of mine) are second-hand), but going south once a year during the bitter January weather is our big splurge.
My husband had a business that helps us collect a lot of Airmiles, so the airfare is generally covered most years, but the resort we’ve been going to is the least expensive of a very expensive chain. After 6 years, I want a change, but my husband would like to stick with the same chain, and even the usual one is almost $5K (US) for 7 nights, and the one that’s a step up is almost $6K. That’s around $6400 and $7700 Canadian, just for the resort. And will I like the resort we haven’t tried yet enough to justify spending an extra $1000+? Now, it’s an all-inclusive, and the only extra $ we spend is to park at the airport for the week, tip the transportation between the airport and the resort, the taxes and fees on our Airmiles tickets, and a few souvenirs, but still… $1000 a day for 4 of us??? It seems crazy! But I have to admit when we’re at the resort, sliding down the slides at the water park, lounging on the beach, or eating the delicious food that’s been prepared to cater to my son’s food allergy, and thinking of the cold, dark days at home, it seems sooo decadent and lovely to be able to take a break like that. So… worth it? Yes when we’re there. It’s harder to see that when we’re paying for it in March for the following January though.
I feel like I should mention that my kids are 9 and almost-7. My son has been to our “usual” resort every January of his life, and our daughter can’t remember a time we didn’t go. She’s a January baby, so over half her birthdays for the last 6 years have been in Jamaica. The staff at the amazing kids’ club is very consistent and they and the kids remember each other’s names from year-to-year. It’s hard to give that up, and yet… I was bored this year. The smallness of the resort that made it cozy and friendly-feeling when my kids were toddlers has made it feel a bit constricting as the years have gone on, especially now that the kids don’t want to spend the whole week with me and disappear to the kids’ camp more and more, leaving me to my own devices. I really feel it’s time for something new…
I know, I know, I keep replying to myself, but I keep thinking of more I want to say on this topic…
In addition to the yearly trip south, my husband and I do separate trips. He goes to hockey tournaments once a year out of town (just Montreal, which is nearby and not terribly expensive), and I go to a writer’s conference in Green Bay almost yearly. A couple of years ago I skipped it in favour of 6 days in Paris to take photos with another photographer friend (this probably cost me less than $1000 because I stayed with her at the place she’d already rented and she didn’t want any money from me), and a couple of years before that my husband was in Paris to play hockey with some cousins of his. We don’t usually do anything in the way of travel in the summer though, because we have a pool and even when we do a day trip somewhere, we usually reach a point where we look at each other and say “we’d rather be home swimming”.
I’m thinking of skipping next spring’s conference if it means being able to do a more expensive vacation in January.
It’s also a big factor that my son has an egg allergy so finding food for him while travelling can be difficult. If we stay in hotels we need a kitchenette, or at least a fridge so we can be sure to have food on hand that’s safe for him.